Re: 2010 worst year for home sales since 1997

On Thu, 20 Jan 2011, Lance McLain wrote:
> Just curious, but how do your property taxes work there?  Is there an 
> annual reassessment, are there increase caps?

I have no idea what an "increase cap" is, but yeah, we get property 
assessments every year, usually the first week of January or thenabouts. 
For three years, we got *two* assessments -- one for the apartment we live 
in, and one for the apartment we were renting out -- but since we sold the 
latter apartment last summer, we got just the one assessment this year.

FWIW, the government-issued assessments are generally agreed to be a 
little on the low side; if they say you can sell for $150,000, it usually 
means you can sell for $160,000 or $170,000; they're basing the assessment 
on recent sales in your neighbourhood, etc., but they don't know what the 
actual condition of your property is (the upkeep, etc.).

Also FWIW, when the big financial crisis hit a couple years ago, the 
property assessments were kinda-sorta put on hold.  Basically, the 
assessment you get in January is based on the state of the market back in 
July ... and the crisis hit in October.  So, the property assessments in 
many cases reflected the optimistic big-bubble thing that was still in 
effect in July, rather than the more depressed market that had come along 
by the time the assessments were issued.  As a result, the people who 
issue these assessments sent us the figure for that year *and* the 
previous year, and settled on whichever figure was lower.

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