Gotta Love Getting Screwed

So back at the beginning of the year, we got our new tax assessment from the city. The taxable value of our home went from $72,000 to $164,000. Needless to say, Darling Hubby and I were floored by this. There is no way in hell that our house is worth that much. Even if we wanted to sell it, we haven't put that much work into it, and there is no way that we could get that for it. We are still trying to figure out how the city goes about deciding how much houses are worth. As far as we can tell they look at the sell price of houses in the neighborhood and decide to pick and arbitrary amount. Of course, the house next door sold in October of 2006 for $125,000 but the city has it on the books that it sold for $188,000. I've got documentation from the neighbor showing this error. It looks like this clerical error is what caused our tax assessment to go through the roof. At least we hope that's the reason.

Yes, we are fighting it. The whole neighborhood has put in complaints to have our houses reassessed. What we want is for someone to actually come to the house and do a proper assessment instead of just driving by or picking a number out of thin air.

So I called the Office of Assessment this morning to find out when and where the meeting is being held. It's next Tuesday and since we've submitted a complaint, we are welcome to go. Here's the deal. They are scheduled for the hearing from 9am-1pm and then again from 6pm-8pm. The whole thing is first come first served and since the city has over 31,000 parcels of land with no idea of how many parcels have complained, there is no telling how long of a wait there will be and even if you will get to say your piece. To top it off, you won't get an answer that day. The board will listen to what you have to say, look at your paper work that was submitted and set it aside to look at on a later date. Seems kinda pointless to me.

We've decided that we aren't going to go through the hassle of waiting for nothing. We submitted everything that we could to prove our case and nothing that we say out loud will show anything different. Now it's a waiting game. I just don't think we can afford to pay more into our mortgage payment to be put into escrow to cover the tax increase. I hope to hear something by July...I'm hoping that somewhere out there, someone is looking out for us in our neighborhood and that we will be reassessed at a reasonable rate.