Lowering Your Property Taxes - It's Already Happening

Hello Neighbors,

You've probably received the mailers, most are from businesses in Southern California: "Challenge your property taxes now, for only $179.00".

DO NOT DO THIS

It is a scam.

Confirmed this morning by Ken Stieger, Sacramento County Tax Assessor. In fact, the Sacramento County DA and others are working with the Los Angeles DA to go after these companies.

Unfortunately, these companies are popping up faster than they can be shut down (I think it's where the sub-prime mortgage brokers from a few years ago are now operating!).


In 2008, Sacramento County re-assessed and lowered property tax base values on 85,000 residential properties (homes) - AUTOMATICALLY.

In 2009? They are predicting a lowering of 130,000 residential properties - again, AUTOMATICALLY.

How does this work?

We've all heard about Proposition 13. What you may not know about is Proposition 8. That was passed at a similar time, and stated that property tax baseline values would be reset during periods of non-growth.

That's right.

Of the roughly 400,000 residential properties in Sacramento County, over 1/3 are going to be reset automatically as part of the processes built in to the County Tax Assessor's procedures.

Where are these value re-sets ending up? On average? Equivalent to property values (and tax bases) from the years 1999 and 2000.

Nice.

- Jim

www.NeighborlyRealt.com