In certain years a blanket assessment is enacted resulting in a re-assessment of property taxes.
Often inaccurate "quick" values are concocted. Many times adjustment is enacted using a multiplier
factor to adjust these values. Little time is allocated to this rendering of property value.
Municipalities reappraise the homes within their borders by hiring blanket appraisal companies. This
is done in a bidding process and the low bid wins. If the bid allocation was only $38 per home and
the blanket appraiser needed to make a profit, how much time can actually be spent per home? The
people the appraiser hires are time-pressed to make their observations.
What we are saying is that errors abound in the blanket real estate tax appraisal of properties. If
the blanket appraisal company or town uses multipliers, there is no way that you can take those bad
initial assessment numbers and turn them into accurate numbers by multiplying them by another
figure.
An inexpensive fix for the town could come about if building inspectors and the tax department
communicated closely by working together. If the building inspector passed on information to the
assessor, there would be no need for blanket re-assessments. New homes sold need only be equalized
with the previous blanket assessment. If an addition or home improvement took place, the added value
could be passed on to the tax assessor. If the building department and tax department worked
efficiently, there would be no need for blanket reassessments.
Tax assessors are time pressed and rarely appraise homes. Usually, they are not property appraisers
and are politically appointed. Often they use an entirely different method to derive value for a
home by using a cost of materials approach. The universally accepted approach is the market value,
what an informed buyer would pay for a home.
In a property tax appeal, only the market appraisal counts. That means that your home stacks up to
the current selling price of your comparable homes and that becomes the only solid evidence of
value.
A huge amount of money is spent on blanket municipal appraisals. Sure they may catch the occasional
patio or shed built without a permit, but that does not warrant the extra appraisal cost.
Blanket reassessments are opportunities for appeal because of the high error rate. Homeowners need
to do a simple analysis to determine if their home's market value is in line with the assessed value
assigned to their home.
