Protesting a property tax valulation. Own the home. No HS because my in-laws live there so not making money off it monthly. Property went up 25% in value which is insane for 2022.

I initially countered at a value, but they stuck to the same number they had and now I have to go to the board. First time.

In their appraisal they sent me, they added about 25-42k to each comp for neighborhood adjustment. The neighborhood of the comps are not really different than the house. It seems they just came up with some arbitrary number to have the medium of the comps b\e the same as their initial appraisal. Thoughts on this?

They had 4 comps with sale dates of 2/28/2022, 3/15/2022, 6/21/2022, and 10/19/2022. I didnt think they could use comps from the beginning of the year?

The comp closest to 1/1/2023 from October was the lowest even after they added 42k in neighborhood adjustment.

nhamp07 said:

---

Protesting a property tax valulation. Own the home. No HS because my in-laws live there so not making money off it monthly. Property went up 25% in value which is insane for 2022.

I initially countered at a value, but they stuck to the same number they had and now I have to go to the board. First time.

In their appraisal they sent me, they added about 25-42k to each comp for neighborhood adjustment. The neighborhood of the comps are not really different than the house. It seems they just came up with some arbitrary number to have the medium of the comps b\e the same as their initial appraisal. Thoughts on this?

They had 4 comps with sale dates of 2/28/2022, 3/15/2022, 6/21/2022, and 10/19/2022. I didnt think they could use comps from the beginning of the year?

The comp closest to 1/1/2023 from October was the lowest even after they added 42k in neighborhood adjustment.

---

Each neighborhood has a coefficient attached to it that is used in calculating the appraised value. You may not see those values for each neighborhood when looking up comparable properties on CAD but they should be listed in the calculations CAD used for your comps. It sounds like you are in a small high quality neighborhood that does not have much sale data, so they had to use sales from a nearby lesser quality neighborhood. That would explain why the comps needed an increase to factor in your neightborhood.

The dates of sale also do not matter as much, but more recent is more accurate. They apply a time factor for each month the comp sale was before 1/1/2023. So a December sale would have no time factor, an October sale would have 2X(factor), and a January sale would have 11X(factor), etc.

Also, CAD uses high sale comps to keep your value high, but you can find lower sale comps to use as evidence for your protest. The evidence package you get from CAD starts with just the first comps they use and shows the formulas, but you also can get all/most of the sale history of houses in your area that they looked at to find the "best" comps. This does not include all sales, just the ones they used to narrow down to their final comps.

In preparation for my protest, I took all of the sale data they provided (~110 sales through Jan 2022) and put it in a spreadsheet then sorted it by sale price per living square foot. I did not run through the entire formula that they use to account for time factors, pools, outdoor kitchens, remodels, C/D/U, etc. but the $/SF was good enough to get much better comps that favored my case. She knitpicked at a few which I expected, but letting her choose from the best 8 on a $/SF basis was a lot better than her going with the high $/SF values out of ~110 sales the CAD originally used.

End result was reducing my market value by ~20%, though it was still an increase from the year before. It also helps to keep the appraised value down later if HS cap applies, though not in your case.

Good luck.