Health & Fitness
Appeal Now to Reduce Your Property Taxes in Three Easy Steps
As home prices continue to fall, look for the silver lining and file an appeal to reduce your tax burden. Everything you need is online, and this article walks you through the process in just 3 steps.
Think your home may have gone down in value? Don’t agree with the County’s assessment of your home’s market value? Now is the time to take issue with it. This value will not affect anything but your tax bill, so don’t be afraid to ask to have it reduced. You can pay to have your property appraised, but it’s more fun to do it yourself.
1) First things first - find your home’s tax assessment.
If you have misplaced the Annual Notice of Assessment that was mailed earlier this month you can get this information from this County website:
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http://www.gwinnettcounty.com/TRRPWeb/AssesmentNoticeEntry.do
Here you can search for your property by Owner Name, Property ID or Mailing Address (don’t put in the state - the number and street should be enough). You will find your 2013 and 2012 property tax “Fair Market Value” and “Assessed Value”. The Assessed Value will be 40% of your Market Value and is used to calculate your taxes.
Find out what's happening in Daculawith free, real-time updates from Patch.
2) Find surrounding home values and recent home sales
The GIS Data Browser
Go to the Gwinnett County website:
Select "Top Links" along the top menu bar. Once the menu drops down select "GIS Data Browser"
Click to accept the conditions and the county map should launch. If you have problems with the map you might find better results with a different browser.
Play around with the tools until you are able to get a map of your street, zooming in until you see all the parcels. You can now select the 'i' (Information) tool on the map's toolbar and then click on your lot to bring up a detail window. Once you click all the little '+' signs to expand the fields you will find out some very interesting information about your property. You can also see the official appraised values for any other home in your neighborhood. Check the values of other homes on your street - if yours is at the high end you can use that in your appeal. Remember, this has nothing to do with what you could sell your home for. This is just an appraisal for tax purposes.
Gwinnett Tax Assessor Website
If you can get this to work it is an excellent resource. Access this information at www.gwinnett-assessor.com and click on the “GIS/Property Search” link on the left hand side. In the search box that appears type in your street address without the city or state and click “search”. You should see your name listed, and when you click on the link you will be taken to a very detailed report on your property that includes square footage and even a floor plan. You may be surprised to find out how much the County knows about your home. Select the “Comparable Sales” tab to see the most recent sales near your home, or the “Property Report” tab to generate a pdf version of this information.
To see a map of your neighborhood with current estimated home prices, along with recent sales, turn to the private sector: Zillow.
Type in your address and you should see your home. Click on the “Filter” button next to the address and select “Recently Sold.” Those homes that have sold should now have yellow icons. Clicking on one of these yellow homes will give you the sale date and price. I picked all the homes closest to me that sold within the past two years. Remember, you can now use foreclosure sales.
Does the assessed value of your home match the selling values of comparable homes in your neighborhood? Even if it does, you might consider reducing the value by 10% to reflect dropping prices in Gwinnett.
3) File the Appeal
The County has made it fairly easy to file an appeal electronically at this website:
http://gwinnettassessor.manatron.com/IWantTo/Forms/RealProperty/PT311A.aspx
Once you register you can locate your property by address and start the appeal. Select both ‘value’ and ‘uniformity’ as the grounds for appeal. Accept the default for where you want the appeal sent (BOE). You will be sent to a screen with the current land and improvement (house) value. Make the adjustments you feel are accurate.
I opted to attach a document that showed the most recent sales near my home along with some of the valuations the County had (from the GIS browser) for homes on my street that were lower than mine. For my property, every $10,000 I take off of my total value reduces my taxes by $135. This year I should save almost $400.
Once you hit the final submit button your appeal is filed. You no longer have to print a document and mail it in.