The time we appealed, we had just done 2 assessments of each of the properties involved by two different appraisers following a death. The tax valuation was significantly higher for each property. The comparables the tax office used were much newer properties in much better condition and NOT comparable. The board agreed with our appraisals and reduced the valuations.
For some reason, the tax office has decided our house is larger with more bedrooms than it actually has. I have no idea why they decided to increase our square footage and # of bedroomsâmaybe got us mixed up with other properties? Maybe I will call and see how to get them to fix it. We have never remodeled or added any bedrooms since we bought the home nearly 30 years ago and itâs pretty much as it was since it was built over 60 years ago.
If thatâs actually true, you should be protesting your tax evaluation. I canât imagine that the process isnât written explicitly on your county tax appraisal web site.
There are even professional âprotestersâ who will protest for you. If they are unsuccessful, you pay them nothing. If they do get your assessment reduced, they take a percentage that has been agreed upon in advance. Weâve done this several times, though DH usually handles it himself.
I just have to decide if I want to bother with it. Our real estate taxes for houses valued at under $1mm are generally $2,000/yr or less, so many donât bother to fight. If it were higher, like $10,000, thereâd be more incentive to contest.
We put everything on credit cards, too. We find it easier to track our expenses that way. We have one card that gets us miles, and one w/2.5% cashback. They are paid in full every month.
A friend of ours has very good season tickets to the Nationals â he goes to most of the games, but also sells his tickets periodically. Donât know if he gets face value. When I go to a Nats or Caps game, I go on the secondary market and always pay less than face value. Great for me, not so great for the season ticketholder. The only time I might be on the wrong side of that transaction would be a playoff game. Even if I were to go to 15-20 games a year, I would still do the secondary market vs. a partial package. Iâm too risk averse to having to sell tickets if I couldnât attend.
If you are making $300k/year, youâre stretching to afford a mortgage in Bethesda/Chevy Chase, unless you bought your house 20 years ago or brought significant equity from a prior residence. In that case, if you havenât pulled equity, you can afford college for your kids. Private high school costs in this area are comparable to UMDâs COA. There is a significant premium to living close to DC.
Our financial priorities were retirement first; college best suited to S1 & S2 second; and the house was a distant third. The result is that our house is not as big an asset as it could have been had we bought something bigger (and we are in a more distant suburb). OTOH, our mortgage is very small and that enabled us to accomplish priorities 1 & 2. This also enabled us to weather my medical expenses and my resulting erratic income. DH has also sacrificed opportunities because of my situation. Given our family backgrounds growing up, weâre risk averse and recognize that comes at some price.
We did challenge our assessment one year but that time, it had increased a lot for no discernable reason (i.e., no community-wide reassessment). The reason turned out to be our alleged 6,000-square-foot garage. Which was a typo. The assessor took one look at that number, said âdo you really have a 6,000-square-foot garage?â, and changed our assessment on the spot.
âIf you are making $300k/year, youâre stretching to afford a mortgage in Bethesda/Chevy Chaseâ
I thought one of the major reasons for stretching to afford a mortgage in Bethesda/Chevy Chase is because of the excellent public schools. I assume Kavanaugh and his wife are choosing to pay for Catholic school tuition for their 2 daughters for reasons other than academic.
Wow, that is low. In our area, the assessment is usually what you paid for the house. We lived here for 30 years and the house needed a lot of repairs when we bought it. It is assesssd a little over $500K. The property tax is around $20K.
We had an obnoxious person as tax assessor for our town for a while. We got an assessment that seemed high, because it was treating our basement as finished space or something like that. When we called to ask about how to appeal, she said, âWell. If you choose to appeal, we will go over your whole house with a fine-tooth comb and your assessment might go up or down. You decide if you want to appeal.â We did appeal and the assessed value declined. She was fired at some point.
Our property taxes are quite a bit higher than yours @rosered55 but I think the assessed valuation is also much higher.
@Iglooo what one can get for housing in some areas of Hawaiiâ under $1M is quite different than many areasâŠalthough west coast/east coast has some very pricey areas both on costs of homes and taxes. The âtax breakâ I suspect is for the core of people who have to deal with high costs of many ârapidly consumed consumer convenience goodsâ and basics like food, clothing with limited income.
I suspect most on this thread think, plan, look around to feasible options on how to carry out âlifeâ - and make decisions which makes life sweet. I just added a second âsunset career jobâ - working 19 hours/week as adjunct faculty with a pretty good hourly rate; can continue my other job (PRN, 2nd shift nursing). Was SAHM for 18 years - which also included 5 years of overcoming aggressive stage III cancer (w/o really planning to be SAHM, but with no family in our area, and H having a lot of international work travel during the kidsâ young yearsâŠ) So nice that I can utilize my S/K/E/aptitude in the work force and help feather our nest egg. I had worked in higher ed in several other positions and also was adjunct faculty in other fields (marketing, management).
Life is definitely sweet w/o financial worries and good health. Our family had a period where things were not like they are now.
HI taxes vary quite significantly by county. On Oahu, a home under a million is taxed at the same rate for everyone. Over a million - non-residents pay a much higher rate than residents. If it is in a designated resort area, out of staters need to expect to pay even more. A reasonable approach, IMO.
@doschicos,
The schools in Bethesda/Chevy Chase are all part of MCPS. Itâs a county-wide system, so theyâre in the same school system as the ones near me. Youâre paying for the SES. The âworstâ schools in MCPS still offer 15 AP classes. If you live in Bethesda-Chevy Chase, you may not feel as compelled to try to get your high-achieving kids into the STEM or IB county-wide programs, because the schools will be just fine, though the competition for college admissions is fierce (see The Overachievers).
For us, letting the guys go to the college of their choice assumed K-12 public schools. They were fortunate to get into the selective admit STEM and IB magnet programs, which were excellent and a better fit for S1 than anywhere else. DH communtes an hour door-to-door to his fed job. Our 52 yo house in a starter neighborhood would be double the price if we lived in Bethesda, and because itâs on a .5 acre lot, it would likely be a teardown even at that price.
To tie back to retirement, downsizing to a condo near us will cost as much as this house. I wouldnât mind moving closer to DC to reduce DHâs commute now that the nest is empty, but the prices are just prohibitive. We canât have it all. There has been no assistance from our parents over the years, and there will be no inheritances coming our way. Three of my four sibs have ZERO savings. I cost my medical insurance $200k/year. Weâre hunkering down and squirreling away because we donât know what Medicare/retiree medical/the stock market will do in the next few years. Under the current scenario, we will be ok. Itâs all the upside-down things that could happen that could really throw us for a loop.
I will say that the property taxes some of you cite are mind-boggling! Ours is a shade over 1% of assessed value. Our tax assessment is about 12% less than market value, though some recent sales are sure to push that assessment up in the next cycle. OTOH, our state taxes are high.
Our property tax appeals go before a board of elderly residents appointed by the tax assessor. Most grew up in tiny country houses and they find anything that sells for >$1 million to be sinful. I fought our assessment successfully before and am considering another go at it but itâs very difficult for me to make the required personal appearance in the county seat.
On the bright side, our taxes are low here so even with the assessment being about 20% above market value we pay much less than we would in most other locations. Prices of smaller houses have rebounded everywhere weâve looked, while sales of large houses here have never recovered, so thereâs that problem as well. As soon as dh turns 65, weâll get a break on our property taxes which is another reason I think weâll be staying put for the next decade or so after all.
