Busted: The Mortgage Meltdown

Today (May 8th) I went before the Fulton County Board of Equalization to appeal my tax assessment. I live in a neighborhood with 10 houses. The Board of Assessors appraised the fair market value higher than many of my neighbors. Therefore, I appealed. I thought the evidence that my house was assessed too high was very sound. Here is a brief description of the case.

There are ten houses in my neighborhood. There are three to four houses that are assessed much lower than mine. There are four other houses assessed similar or higher than mine. The Board of Assessors’ case used the houses that were same or higher to my house to make their case. I presented the lower assessed houses. I also use the has only house sold in the neighborhood since 2004. It sold in 2007 for approx. $75,000 less than my assessed value, after it was on the market for 10 months. The house that sold was very comparable. Both houses had same sq footage, built the same year, the house that sold had a larger lot (.6 acre to my .4 acres), they had 6 bedrooms and we have 5 bedrooms. I thought the recent sale provided powerful evidence that the real estate in our neighborhood is assessed too high. However, instead of weighing all the evidence presented on both sides - the Board of Equalization only considered what the Board of Assessors presented and did not consider what I presented. They said the recent sale in my neighborhood did not matter. They also indicated that house values have not gone down in value. The quote was, “real estate markets go up and they go down, but it has no relevance to assessed value.”

I was extremely surprised to learn/experience that the Fulton County Board of Equalization did not listen to all the evidence.

There may be a mortgage melt down - but tax assessors do not want fair tax assessments because it will affect tax revenues.