Inflated home assessment and FASFA

Parents Forum
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<p>We received our property tax assessment yesterday. According to the city, our home's value appreciated more than $20,000 last year. We live in Michigan. The same Michigan with unemployment that exceeds 10% and tons of foreclosures. Another area auto parts supplier announced this week that it is closing. Thousands of people have lost their jobs. No real estate is moving in our area, and several homes are in foreclosure. I am certain that the value of our home has actually decreased. We will appeal the assessment, but our appeal board is notorious for denying appeals, and the city certainly has an interest in keeping assessed values high. I don't think we will learn the outcome of our appeal until after the FASFA deadline.</p>

<p>How do I value our home on this year's FASFA? Do I use the inflated city assessment? Do I use my own assessment based on what I can gather from the most recent transactions in our area? What is my obligation? I don't cheat; I also don't want to shoot ourselves in the foot by including information that I know, while "official", is inaccurate.</p>

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<p>this thread might help</p>

<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/292263-question-about-home-value-fafsa.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/292263-question-about-home-value-fafsa.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>city certainly has an interest in keeping assessed values high</p>

<p>same here :p</p>

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<p>Correction: I should have invoked the Profile, not FASFA in the thread title.</p>

<p>Thanks for the link, MK4, I'm reading it now.</p>

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<p>You can use zillow.com, but be careful. They aren't necessarily any better that anything else. There is one way you can get some certainty though. Zillow will show the sales price of recently sold homes. If you can get the tax assessment for those recently sold homes you can get some idea of how in line, or out of line, your own assessment is. (My locality provides phone access to get the tax assessment for any home in the county by entering the address.) Just as an appraiser will use a number of measures to come up with a value, you will probably need to do the same to come up with a value that you feel comfortable reporting.</p>

<p>One other thing, often times the tax assessments are based on estimated value from 12 months ago or longer. MY county always runs a year behind. This may account for much of the inaccuracy that you see. Check with your assessor.</p>