CITY ASSESSMENTS If it were up to me, I'd come up with a different way of establishing how much we should pay for property taxes. Each year, the city evaluates each property in the summer time then sends the values out in February. This a flawed system, not only are they not physically looking at each property the market can change dramatically from June to February. This becomes confusing for many homeowners and buyers. I've seen years where the market got hot and prices rose by 5% by February so your asking price would be much higher than the city assessment. This adds fear to buyers they are paying too much when they are expected to pay much more than the assessed value. On the flip side, I've had years where the city was over- optimistic on values, and sellers would call me wanting to list at the assessed value. I had to be the one to give them the bad news, which some even challenged their value to get their taxes reduced.
PROFESSIONAL APPRAISAL
Nothing determines the sale price of a piece of real estate but the price at which it sells. Houses are not same-priced identical cans of tuna on the grocery store shelf or shares of stock valued and traded every day on the stock exchange. Real estate appraisal (“property valuation”) is the process of arriving at developing a perspective of value for real property. This is the market value — i.e., what a willing reasonable buyer would pay for the property to a willing reasonable seller. Real estate transactions generally require assessments because they happen infrequently, and every real property is unique in features and characteristics.
An appraisal helps in various decision points. The seller can use
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