Fighting City Hall - Property Assessment

[CaberTosser]

We're heading in for a hearing with the City this week to argue our appeal of our property assessment. We have already received a rebuttal from the minions at City Hall and it was pretty funny as the evidence that they used to base their evaluation on was about as inaccurate as one could get, I think they must have either hired from the bottom of the class or the staff are specifically instructed to use the most outrageously priced properties in their comparisons. Either way, it does not paint a pretty picture of the department. If the review board is remotely fair or competent I think we've got a pretty good chance of a 20%-30% tax reduction. The thing is, I don't trust bureaucrats to be fair so I want to be as prepared as possible. We have a unique lot in that there are only about 8 total in the entire community, all of which are my immediate neighbors. The city used exactly zero of those properties as comparisons in building their assessment so I think their intent is obvious . They are not trying to build a fair market value of my property so that I can pay a fair share of taxes, they are clearly trying to maximize it and have resorted to unscrupulous means to do so. I really wonder where government finds these soul-less minions

Anyways, Mrs Caber & I have just finished the rebuttal of their rebuttal and I think that we've not only soundly beaten them with it, but we've truly rag-dolled them. Having their own evidence to refute and flog them with was actually quite satisfying. The only bad part is that we have to supply them with the rebuttal prior to the hearing so we won't be able to see the shock or guilt on their faces. There can be no reasonable 2nd rebuttal from them based on anything remotely logical, our bases are covered.

[58thecat]

You go get em, hope it works out for you.

[purgatory.sv]

Don’t give up.

After 3 years the property I reside in has been revaluated.

[Bergerboy]

X2, My boss had his recreation property reevaluated and they came down considerably.

[rugatika]

Good luck!

[CaberTosser]

Originally Posted by purgatory.sv

Don’t give up.

After 3 years the property I reside in has been revaluated.

How did that go for you, long and arduous with the minions digging in their heels? That's is what we're afraid of, a denial simply based on them setting & maintaining precedent with regards to their cash cow. I don't think these departments like to be proven wrong, they certainly must have instruction from city hall to collect as much as possible. I wonder if they consider re-evaluations that went in the property owners favor as failures when they should consider them as successes. I'm thinking that a low success rate for appeals means either perfect evaluations or a corrupt system. I'm curious how many appeals are validated, I know that some would be frivolous and should be denied but those aren't the kind I'm curious about.

[alacringa]

After I bought my place (2 yrs ago), the tax eval was $20 000 less than what I had payed. This year, it was $30 000 less than what I had payed. Ever changes nothing.

[CaberTosser]

Originally Posted by alacringa

After I bought my place (2 yrs ago), the tax eval was $20 000 less than what I had payed. This year, it was $30 000 less than what I had payed. Ever changes nothing.

If you like I can let them know that you're not paying enough. I'll be there anyways so it won't be an inconvenience at all, what's your address?

[Trochu]

Good luck Caber.

We received our property assessments in the spring and the evaluation of our lot had increased 23% from the year before, in a recession. I called city hall and they passed the buck on to the assessment firm. After talking to them for five minutes one almost has to walk away....

I brought up its highly unlikely that the lot value has increased 23% in the middle of a recession (they said its based on a three year running average and you can't look at one year), that the $/sq. ft. of the "comparables" was considerably lower than my lots $/sq. ft. and they were a more desirable location (location doesn't come into play as apparently some people like living on the busiest road in town with druggies on either side compared to the nicest neighborhood in town with mature trees), if its based on a three year running average, and years 1 and 2 were high but 3 brought it down, how come my assessment only went up 3% the year before (this is our first year doing this city we can't be held responsible for inadequacies of the preious assessment firm), etc. etc. etc.

Then if you can actually nail them down on something, they typically quote an act or some such thing which most people have no idea what they are talking about, you have to pay a fee to show them were they went wrong and take time out of the middle of the day to explain it to them. The deck is seriously slanted.

Again, all the best, I hope you wipe the floor with them!

[Okotokian]

So what exactly is your rationale for wanting a 20-30% decrease?

[waterninja]

Good luck in your getting your property re-assessed. If you do get it lowered, I'd be very curious on how much you actually saved in paying taxes. Also wonder if you'll have to all again next year.

[CaberTosser]

Originally Posted by Okotokian

So what exactly is your rationale for wanting a 20-30% decrease?

We figure the fact that they assessed our house $400k higher than our immediate neighbor's seemed enough. Sure our house is newer and larger, but it's also unfinished in many large details and has no garage (bad budgetary discipline on my part during the build combined with some other factors. The blame for that is on me but the value they've quoted is exorbitant). The city assessment brought up 15 properties sold in our neighborhood and an adjacent one, noting their sale prices combined with the sizes of the homes and lots. Among these they included three of those pricey duplexes (luxury 'semi-attached' $875k types in Killarney') which as everyone knows would significantly drive up price per sq ft of land value. They remaining homes compared were all on rectangular lots of about 6000 sq ft which are also not a good benchmark for our larger pie lot. Going onto the city's website there is a feature where you can click on a map and get the city assessment for any property so we checked the assessed values of all of the identically sized pie lots neighboring us and recorded those, adding up the 7 lots assessments and dividing by 7, as well as adding up the 6 excluding ours and dividing by 6 to provide a average figures that both included and excluded our property. The averages were varied from $310k to $350k less than our assessment, depending on whether or not our home was included in the average of the other assessments (removing our home drove the average down by over $40k). Originally there were a total of 8 pie lots that matched, but one has been subdivided and now has two detached homes and two triple garages so it no longer serves as a direct comparison (again the price per sq ft of the densely developed lots would drive up our assessment).

Given that we had to submit our initial appeal a while that the city responded with their retort, it gave us lots of ammo with which to respond. The city's reply noted that based on lot footage alone and no house at all they could justify our assessment, this was from comparing the numbers achieved by using the densely packed properties I already noted. If that were true then why does my immediate neighbor with an identical lot pay on an evaluation of $400K less f the houses don't matter? They've obviously doctored their comparisons to justify the high number, rather than selecting the most appropriate comparisons of my direct neighbor's on identical lots. They did not include a single direct neighbor in their comparative data, which demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were trying to justify the high assessment rather than to provide us with a fair & equitable assessment.

[Okotokian]

Originally Posted by CaberTosser

We figure the fact that they assessed our house $400k higher than our immediate neighbor's seemed enough. Sure our house is newer and larger, but it's also unfinished in many large details and has no garage (bad budgetary discipline on my part during the build combined with some other factors. The blame for that is on me but the value they've quoted is exorbitant). The city assessment brought up 15 properties sold in our neighborhood and an adjacent one, noting their sale prices combined with the sizes of the homes and lots. Among these they included three of those pricey duplexes (luxury 'semi-attached' $875k types in Killarney') which as everyone knows would significantly drive up price per sq ft of land value. They remaining homes compared were all on rectangular lots of about 6000 sq ft which are also not a good benchmark for our larger pie lot. Going onto the city's website there is a feature where you can click on a map and get the city assessment for any property so we checked the assessed values of all of the identically sized pie lots neighboring us and recorded those, adding up the 7 lots assessments and dividing by 7, as well as adding up the 6 excluding ours and dividing by 6 to provide a average figures that both included and excluded our property. The averages were varied from $310k to $350k less than our assessment, depending on whe ther or not our home was included in the average of the other assessments (removing our home drove the average down by over $40k). Originally there were a total of 8 pie lots that matched, but one has been subdivided and now has two detached homes and two triple garages so it no longer serves as a direct comparison (again the price per sq ft of the densely developed lots would drive up our assessment).

Given that we had to submit our initial appeal a while that the city responded with their retort, it gave us lots of ammo with which to respond. The city's reply noted that based on lot footage alone and no house at all they could justify our assessment, this was from comparing the numbers achieved by using the densely packed properties I already noted. If that were true then why does my immediate neighbor with an identical lot pay on an evaluation of $400K less f the houses don't matter? They've obviously doctored their comparisons to justify the high number, rather than selecting the most appropriate comparisons of my direct neighbor's on identical lots. They did not include a single direct neighbor in their comparative data, which demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were trying to justify the high assessment rather than to provide us with a fair & equitable assessment.

Thanks. Well good luck!

[CaberTosser]

Our revue was today and we sat through another review preceding ours so that was nice to witness prior to our presentation, I think it helped us to see the process from a neutral position first. The other complainants were experienced from having done the same thing the previous year so observing their presentation gave us some mental notes for our own. They won their review last year so it was odd that they had to appeal it when receiving a high appraisal yet again

The process involves a 3 member review board who are not city employees, I believe they were probably all realtors (a realtor client whom I contacted about our appeal noted that a friend & work associate of hers was a review board member). The city had a representative there and we sat facing the board like plaintiffs and defendants, the entire session being recorded. While we feel that our presentation went well, we were a bit disappointed that the rebuttal evidence we had sent in two days ago was not allowed as a submission as it was deemed to be 'new evidence' from our original complaint. We were allowed to address that information verbally though, its just that our spreadsheets could not be entered for their review. Being new to the process we had only submitted reasons that we felt our property was overvalued in our initial review complaint, but we had not complied any data on more comparable properties until we were inspired to do so by the city's rebuttal. The City's rebuttal gave us many avenues to refute, but these details were not in our original complaint. I'm noting this in case others are lodging similar disputes of their own so that they can make stronger initial cases and won't have evidence refused on timeliness basis. Check out comparable neighboring properties and make yourself up a chart of their features, sizes, sale prices (if applicable) and their assessed values. The City of Calgary has a feature on its website that allows you to zoom in from an overhead map just like in Google Earth and click on any property to see its assessed value. This makes it easy to look up the assessments of your entire neighborhood from which to build your case.

The city representative was reasonable with his presentation and would admit where he did not have information and would ease back from a losing position, though he did maintain the City's overall position on their valuation. The thing I sensed though was that the original valuations were reached by a computer program rather than a human, and these humans such as our 'adversary' are basically tasked with defending the computer-generated valuations that are brought before the revue board. I know that our rebuttal sent him for a major loop, as it completely tore up the City's rebuttal to us and set it alight. I think though that its probably the City's policy to not capitulate and let the board reach their decision. We maintained professional decorum throughout which I'm sure helped, and we got across the point that we're not pulling in exorbitant oil & gas executive salaries or lawyers wages but that we simply bought a large lot a decade ago back when it was relatively cheap.

The process was so smooth and free of drama that I gave business cards to the entire review board and even our 'opponent' from the city

[ÜberFly]

What happens now?

[CaberTosser]

Originally Posted by ÜberFly

What happens now?

Oops, I probably should have covered that .

The board will deliberate our case privately and we should hear something in 4-6 weeks.

[Knownonscents]

What a pain in the butt!! Crazy that your going through this.

I just made the call this spring about the same thing. A couple of times on the phone and they reassessed our house to a more suitable amount. Guess I just got lucky but as it started out it was seeming like I was gonna go through the same thing.......

Glad you got to hand out some cards though!! .

Cheers man.

[CaberTosser]

Originally Posted by Knownonscents

What a pain in the butt!! Crazy that your going through this.

I just made the call this spring about the same thing. A couple of times on the phone and they reassessed our house to a more suitable amount. Guess I just got lucky but as it started out it was seeming like I was gonna go through the same thing.......

Glad you got to hand out some cards though!! .

Cheers man.

Yeah, it was nice to watch the complainants preceding us, as my initial negotiating fantasy sequence went kind of like this:

[Au revoir, Gopher]

Originally Posted by CaberTosser

Yeah, it was nice to watch the complainants preceding us, as my initial negotiating fantasy sequence went kind of like this

Maybe a better sequence would have been Mel Brooks' History of the world... "It's good to be king" Fighting city hall is always fun.

ARG

[fenceline]

My prop trey was assed at 80k more than value I spent $250 for a morgage appraisal company for a real bank value appraisal , the town appraiser said that is irrevelant till I told him I was going to put letter in paper of there over their over inflated value and that he might get real busy explaining why their phony appraisals were being usedby the town !!! Dropped it back to where it should be !!
We are under finical parasite attack from all levels of gouverment !!

[gbart]

Originally Posted by CaberTosser

Yeah, it was nice to watch the complainants preceding us, as my initial negotiating fantasy sequence went kind of like this:

LOL.....
Having been through this process, this thread has been good entertainment and I am sure of your outcome. It will be the same as 99% of all commercial and residential property owners before you.

First fundamental comer stone concept that you need to understand is that the chief administrator of this city is a hard core tax and spend purple idiot liberal.

He has been warned (like the Prentice visit just before the election) that he needs to find new sources of revenue as the province will be a bit short moving forward. His brilliant idea was to instruct his chief assessor to go out and assess everything as high possible as opposed to maybe not spending so much. Notley also loves this and the scary thing is that she will probably give him the tax charter right he has been so salivating to achieve.

God bless you for trying and sorry about your lost wages/earnings you could of made that day.

The systematic reversal of wealth proceeds on schedule.......

[Canehdianman]

Originally Posted by gbart

LOL.....

Having been through this process, this thread has been good entertainment and I am sure of your outcome. It will be the same as 99% of all commercial and residential property owners before you.



First fundamental comer stone concept that you need to understand is that the chief administrator of this city is a hard core tax and spend purple idiot liberal.



He has been warned (like the Prentice visit just before the election) that he needs to find new sources of revenue as the province will be a bit short moving forward. His brilliant idea was to instruct his chief assessor to go out and assess everything as high possible as opposed to maybe not spending so much. Notley also loves this and the scary thing is that she will probably give him the tax charter right he has been so salivating to achieve.



God bless you for trying and sorry about your lost wages/earnings you could of made that day.



The systematic reversal of wealth proceeds on schedule.......

It is clear you don't understand how the mill rate works.

If they assessed everyone's house at 150% of their value next year, do you know what taxes would be??

Exactly the same as there were this year.