June 15, 2008

Marinites Request Reassessment

If you are a lucky Marin homeowner, you have about two weeks left to join thousands of your neighbors in asking for a property reassesment.

With the high median home prices in Marin, if you purchased in recent years, the property tax associated wth your home is sure to be on the higher end.  And if you bought not so long ago, chances are the value of your property has gone down.  That’s the bad news but the only shining light is that the property tax bill should go down with it. 

The MarinIJ reported that many Marinites are in this boat, as they are filing property tax reduction requests by the hundreds and thousands:

“Hundreds of Marin homeowners are lining up to get property tax breaks, saying their homes have lost value and thus are unfairly assessed by the county.   The county assessor’s office now expects 2,000 to 3,000 Marin homeowners to get property tax cuts in the 2008-09 fiscal year due to slumping real estate prices.”

While the article noted that Southern Marin prices are holding up and Northern Marin, especially Novato, is tanking pretty hard, it did not say if the requests followed this similar pattern.  It would seem safe to say it does.

For home seekers, it looks like even homeowners (and potential home sellers) are acknowledging that their home is not worth with it was a year or two ago.