Are Your Property Taxes Too High? Challenge Them!

$43 billion in property values has vanished over the past two years in Sarasota, Manatee, and Charlotte counties in Florida, according to a recent article in my local newspaper. If that's not painful enough, we still have to pay property tax bills that may not accurately reflect what our homes are worth.

Or maybe not. At least that's the message Valerie Faltas, creator of the Little Black Book of Property Values, wants to share.

Valerie is a Certified Property Tax Appraiser who worked for the Los Angeles County Tax Assessor’s Office for over four years. During that time she assessed over 6,000 properties. She was also a licensed residential fee appraiser in California.

She's written The Property Tax Little Black Book in both national and California editions. (The California edition is the more detailed of the two, since the author worked there and has direct experience in that market.)

Her basic premise is that property tax appraisals are handled by overworked agents who may be well-trained but don't have a lot of time to evaluate each property individually, and who certainly don't have the time to go over each property's assessment in detail. Mistakes can be made, and if the mistakes are not in your favor, you'll pick up the tab. 

In fact, as I was flying home from a business trip recently, I overheard a woman describing how she discovered that her parents had been overpaying on their property taxes for years. Turns out they had gone to the tax assessor's office a couple of decades ago to find out how their property tax bill would change if they put in a tennis court. They never did add the tennis court, but the assessor changed their property description based on that inquiry — and they had never caught the change in their bill!

If the value of a property you own has dropped, you owe it to yourself to make sure you aren't overpaying on your taxes as well.

Gerri Detweiler – Personal finance author and Credit Advisor for Credit.com, Gerri contributes budgeting, debt recovery and savings information online. She is also the co-author of Reduce Debt, Reduce Stress: Real Life Solutions for Solving Your Credit Crisis.

Tagged as: home values, Little Black Book of Property Values, overpaying property taxes, property tax appraisals, property tax mistakes, property taxes, property values, tax appraisers

Gerri Detweiler Credit.com's Personal Finance Expert, Gerri focuses on financial legislation, budgeting, debt recovery and consumer savings information. She is also the co-author of Debt Collection Answers: How to Use Debt Collection Laws to Protect Your Rights, and Reduce Stress: Real-Life Solutions for Solving Your Credit Crisis as well as host of TalkCreditRadio.comTalk Credit Radio. Reach Gerri at creditexperts@credit.com.