As property values have been going up sharply in the Silicon Valley, so are the assessors' values of our houses, throughout the area. We can expect therefore to pay more in property taxes, come November and December of 2013.
During the past 4 years I have prepared updated market analysis for several of my clients, in order to justify a lower value to be sent to the tax assessor's office. The goal of course was to pay a lot less in property tax, and I am glad to have been incidental to huge tax reductions in several instances. It is very unlikely that this is going to be possible going forward, as for most of the local area values have gone back to the highs of 2007, and sometimes higher yet. There are some small pockets in the County which would still be lower but there are fewer and fewer of them.
Nonetheless, if you feel that you are being assessed too much, do not hesitate to call on me to double check on it!
An article on the subject was recently
published in the Mercury News, stating that "tens of thousands of homeowners will see their property taxes go up significantly this year as rising home values
restore some or all of their homes’ lost equity".
Do you feel you are being assessed unfairly this year? Let me know.
Thanks for reading,
Francis
Local real estate
updated loan rates Rates are up mostly, except for the 1-yr adjustable
Week ending 6/6/2013 (Source: Freddie Mac)
30-yr. fixed: 3.91% fees/points: 0.7%
15-yr. fixed: 3.03% fees/points: 0.7%
1-yr. adjustable: 2.58% Fees/points: 0.4%
