Tag: Jim Smith

This Week Property Owners Received Notices of Valuation From Their County Assessor

Note: This article is focused on the City and County of Denver. You can find three other versions focused on other counties — one for Jefferson County, one for Aurora/Adams County, and one for Douglas and Arapahoe Counties — in PDF form at www.JimSmithColumns.com.

During the first week of May in every odd numbered year, Colorado’s county assessors are required to inform every property owner of the full valuation that they have assigned to each property. Unless revised downward through the state-mandated appeal process, that valuation will be the basis of the property tax charged for this year and for 2024.

The valuation you received by letter is the assessor’s best guess as to what your property might have sold for on June 30th of the previous (even-numbered) year. That assumes, however, that the condition of your home is the same on Jan. 1st of this year and next year as it was on June 30th of last year. If your house is bigger or smaller on January 1st, that year’s valuation and therefore your property taxes must be adjusted accordingly.

The system actually depends on your participation in correcting the assessor’s valuation, which was the result of a computer-driven “mass appraisal” system, because there’s no way for the assessor’s staff of human appraisers to create a valuation of every home in the City & County of Denver. Those appraisers will, however, read or listen to your appeal of the valuation which their system generated for your home.

Bottom line, therefore, is that you owe it to yourself and to the county to help the assessor come up with the proper valuation for your home. So how do you do that?

For non-residential and commercial  properties, which pay roughly four times the property tax per $100,000 valuation, a whole industry has arisen to help property owners (for a fee) to appeal their property tax valuation.

Residential taxes are so much lower in Colorado that there’s not enough profit for professionals to make, leaving residential homeowners to fight their own battle for lower valuations and therefore lower property taxes.

The county assessors are expected to make it easy for taxpayers to determine whether the assessor guessed correctly at their home’s value as of June 30, 2022. Your first step is to find your home at www.denvergov.org/property/. Note that after you enter your address, you may need to scroll down to see and click on your address. (I mistakenly thought the website was defective and not responding.)

Once you’re on your home’s web page you’ll see a tab “Neighborhood Sales” which lists all the qualified sales that occurred during the eligible period, which is the 24 months prior to June 30, 2022.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that a home which sold after June 30, 2022 (not shown, by the way, under that tab), can be used in your appeal. You may only cite comps which sold during that 24-month period ending June 30, 2022.

To make the list of sales useful, click on the “Square Footage” header to find homes similar in size to yours.  Once you find good comps to use in your appeal, you need to “time adjust” their sale prices.

Time adjustment is based on how much Denver homes increased in value during those 24 months. The Denver assessor has announced that the percentage increase in values from June 30, 2020, to June 30, 2022, for the City & County of Denver is 33%. Divide that by 24 months, and the increase in value for residential properties in Denver was 1.375% per month.

So, if a sale occurred six months prior to June 30, 2022, you need to increase its sale price by six times 1.375%, which computes to 8.25%. That “time adjusted” price is what you need to cite in your appeal.

Note: If, by chance, you bought your home on June 30, 2022, don’t assume that your purchase price will be the assessor’s valuation of your home, because, regardless of what you paid for your home on June 30, 2022, its valuation is based on what eligible comps indicate it should have sold for. Your home would be only one of several comps used by the assessor to value your home. 

Using the procedure described above, if you find your home was overvalued, you need to protest using an online form that is under the “Assessment Protest” tab on your home’s web page, where you can log in as “Guest.”

Your appeal is due in the assessor’s office by June 8, 2023. You can mail or fax your protest, but I recommend an in-person meeting, which you can request by calling 720-913-4164. The assessor’s office is on the 4th floor of the Wellington Webb Municipal Building, 201 W. Colfax Ave., and is open from 8am to 3pm.

If your protest is rejected, the appeal options are explained well on the Notice of Valuation letter which you received in the mail.

Proposal to Reduce Property Taxes Shouldn’t Affect Effort to Obtain the Correct Valuation of Your Home

You may have read that the General Assembly will be putting a proposal on the November ballot which would reduce your property taxes by reducing the valuation of your home by $40,000.

If your home is valued by the assessor at $400,000, your tax will be based on a value of $360,000, resulting in a 10% reduction in your property tax burden. If your home is worth $4 million, that $40,000 reduction results in a 1% reduction in your tax burden. Last year that discount was set at $15,000.

There’s also talk of reducing the assessment rate, which is currently 6.765%. That means that a home with a $1 million value has an “assessed value” of $67,650, against which the mill levy is applied.

The typical Colorado mill levy is around 100 mills which means that before those two discounts, the tax on a million-dollar home would be $6,765. With the million dollar value already reduced by $15,000, the tax is lowered by $101.47. With the $40,000 discount, the tax would be lowered by an additional $169.13.

State Program Pays You $150 When You Replace a Gas-Powered Lawn Mower With an Electric One

Last week I promoted the idea of replacing your gas-powered lawn mower, trimmer and other garden tools with electric ones. A reader alerted me to a Colorado program that provides financial incentives for doing just that.

The program, which is detailed at www.MowDownPollution.org, provides for the following: a $75 voucher for any handheld electric yard tool when a gas version of that tool is recycled: a $75 voucher for an electric lawn mower without the requirement that a gas mower be recycled; and a $150 voucher for an electric lawn mower when you recycle a gas mower.

First you sign up for the program, and get a confirmation email. Then you have 21 days to recycle your lawn mower (for which they provide a list of local recyclers), then you get a voucher which you can redeem at selected Ace Hardware and Home Depot stores, also listed on that website. Only one voucher per household is allowed per year.

Before you can recycle a gas-powered tool, you must drain both the gas and oil.  Denver residents can call the At Your Door Special Collection curbside pickup service at 800-449-7587 for an appointment to recycle that gas and oil. Jeffco residents need to take their gas and oil to the Rooney Road Recycling Center. Get a drop-off reservation by calling 303-316-6262. Adams County residents can go to Veolia Colorado Household Hazardous Waste Recycling Center, 9131 E. 96th Avenue in Henderson. Call 303-526-8155 for appointment. And both Douglas and Arapahoe County residents can call (720) 200-1592 to request a curbside pickup.

Now That Spring Is Here, Homeowners Turn Their Attention to Lawn Care and Landscaping

Last week’s column devoted just one paragraph to landscape improvements that might add value to your home. This week I’ll address the topic at greater length and with less of a focus on improving the resale value of your home.

Rita and I sold our Golden home last year and moved to Avenida Lakewood (now called Solana Lakewood, under new owners), but I retain several ideas and opinions to share about the topic of landscaping and lawn care.

For lawn care, I hired a company to mow my lawn, but prior to that I purchased a corded electric lawn mower. Lowe’s and Ace Hardware have the franchise for EGO battery electric lawn mowers, which I have heard from others are the best. EGO makes many battery-powered yard tools, all of which use the same interchangeable battery. They have edgers, string trimmers, chainsaws, riding and push mowers, snowblowers, leaf blowers, you-name-it. Check out all the EGO products at www.EGOPowerPlus.com. 

Consider for a moment how much quieter your neighborhood would be in the spring, summer and fall if everyone used electric yard tools! Also, it’s well documented that small gas engines are major contributors to air pollution and climate change. According to the EPA, small  gas-powered equipment such as lawn mowers and leaf blowers emit 242 million tons of pollutants annually — as much as cars and homes.

As water bills increase, homeowners are wondering whether perhaps they should replace their Kentucky bluegrass lawns with something that requires less watering. I replaced my lawn with a slower growing sod, but it still required a lot of water. In retrospect I think buffalo grass would have been a better choice. Check with your water utility. The Colorado Water Conservation Board is providing funds to replace lawns, with rebates up to $1/sq.ft. Visit www.EngageCWCB.org.

(Wouldn’t it be smart of CDOT to install buffalo grass on all highway medians and shoulders?)

Xeriscaping is a good solution too, but I can’t imagine dog owners and parents of young children wanting to eliminate grassy backyards for their pets and children.

Hardscaping is another matter. This refers to installing patios, retaining walls and walking paths, as well as occasional boulders. An “outdoor kitchen” is a great enhancement which you’ll enjoy yourself and will ultimately help sell your home. For this you might want to hire a landscaping company. I can recommend one or two if you call me, but I suggest you use Google first and interview multiple companies. Although we considered it, we never hired a landscaping company, so any recommendations I make would not be based on personal experience.

My house, like many Golden homes, was encircled by juniper bushes, but those are a fire hazard and should be nowhere near your home in case of an approaching wildfire. I noticed recently that the new owner of my Golden home had pulled out all the junipers, and she told me that it was for that reason.

Trees are great, but you need to be mindful about which species you plant and where. On the south side of your house, you want to plant deciduous trees, which will shade your home in the summer but allow the sun into your home during the winter. Limit evergreens to the north side of your house, and choose trees that won’t shade your south-facing roof as they mature if you have or plan to install solar panels.

Please share your own landscaping ideas with me, and maybe I’ll feature them in a future column. Thanks, and happy spring!

Just Listed: Solar-Powered Home in Arvada’s Geos Community

I have written many times about Arvada’s Geos Community, where all 25 units, like this detached single-family home at 15062 W. 59th Place, were built as all-electric homes, solar powered, designed to passive solar standards, using the latest heat pump technology, and  super-insulated with CERVs to maximize indoor air quality. The garages are wired for charging EVs. Built in 2017, the idea was to be a model for the kind of construction needed to reduce the carbon footprints of residential housing. I have done my part to publicize and promote it, but I have yet to see a metro Denver developer adopt this proven style of home construction. Indeed, the developer who purchased the adjoining land to build 130 “Geos Community” homes is not following the all-electric, geothermal, heat pump example of these original homes — and they’re selling those new homes at a higher price per square foot than these homes have sold for. Bottom-line, this home — just listed for only $725,000 — is the only true all-electric Geos home you can buy, and it’s priced to sell! Energy costs over the past 12 months averaged $19.91/month, including charging the seller’s EV.        I spell out all the sustainable features of this home in a video tour at www.JeffcoSolarHomes.com, and I’m holding it open this Saturday, April 29th, from 2 to 4pm. 

Just Listed: A 2-Bedroom Townhome in a 55+ Senior Community in Golden

Maintenance-free patio homes and 55+ communities are rare. This townhome at 1140 Ulysses Street is in one of only two such subdivisions within the City of Golden. There are only 24 townhomes in this self-managed HOA, with low monthly dues and Golden’s low all-inclusive property taxes. The units are all story-and-a-half, with a  main-floor master suite plus a guest bedroom with ensuite bathroom and loft upstairs. There’s no basement. There’s a 2-car attached garage with 8+ guest parking spaces adjacent to this end unit. There’s a large covered porch, visible in this picture, and the community’s gazebo used for weekly happy hours during the summer is steps from this home’s porch. The finishes in this unit, as in all the units, are high end, with hardwood floors. It’s a community of happy and friendly neighbors, evident in the fact that there have only been four sales since 2016. NOTE: Agent showings are limited to this Thursday, April 27th, 1-6 pm and during the open house this Saturday, April 29th, from 11am to 1pm. Meanwhile, you can view a narrated video tour of this listing at www.GoldenTownhome.info.

What Are Some Affordable Ways to Make Your Home More Attractive to Buyers?

This week’s column is inspired by an email I received from Brock Pardo of PunchListUSA. His company is in the business of helping sellers fix problems identified in buyers’ inspection objections. Toward that end, he also offers free pre-listing consultations and quotes. (I offer free consultations too, but I’m not a contractor, so I can’t give quotes, just refer you to my vendors for implementing suggested repairs or improvements.)

Being in that business, Brock’s email contained a “top ten” list of issues which could be addressed affordably prior to putting a home on the market, resulting perhaps in selling that home for more money.

Usually, when I get an unsolicited email with a top ten list, I find that it’s not the top ten items I would have selected, but this time I found that I agreed with all of them, so I’m going to publish his list, but with my own elaborations.

1) Fresh coat of paint. Brock cited a report that interior painting returns a 107% return-on-investment, and exterior painting a 50% ROI, but I’d add that it depends on condition. If your home has a faded pastel exterior color popular in the 1990s with or without peeling paint, I’d say that a fresh paint job in a more up-to-date color would make a huge difference in first impressions and the number of showings that are set and offers that you receive.

2) Landscaping improvements. These can be quite affordable and, again, make a huge difference in the first impression that your home makes. A couple months’ service by Lawn Doctor can make a big difference in your lawn’s appeal, as can a load of fresh cedar chips for your non-grassy areas.

3) Upgrading lighting fixtures. Those “brass and glass” chandeliers and sconces are so 1990s, and are inexpensive enough to replace with, for example, brushed nickel fixtures. And even if you don’t replace any fixtures, replace all your incandescent or CFL light bulbs with affordable LED bulbs. The best deal on those, I’ve found, are 8-packs of 60-watt equivalents for $2.75 (34¢ each) from Batteries+Bulbs. (Don’t put your CFLs in the trash. Take them to Home Depot for recycling, because they contain mercury.)

4) Minor kitchen updates. You don’t have to replace your Formica countertop unless it’s damaged or a really bad color, but replacing the faucet on your kitchen sink is an affordable upgrade. Also, I like to see knobs and pulls on kitchen cabinets, and you can get affordable ones, as Rita did, at Hobby Lobby, of all places. Maybe paint or repaint your kitchen cabinets — white is a good choice. Beyond this, I’m happy to bring my stager and consult with you on further upgrades, because kitchens can make a huge difference, and certain improvements are worth considering.

5) Bathroom upgrades. Replacing those 1990s plastic Delta faucets is a no-brainer! And you can find some affordable replacement vanities at home improvement stores.

6) Replace or clean wall-to-wall carpeting. Unless your carpet is shag or damaged, cleaning it professionally is sufficient and affordable. My preferred carpet cleaner is Bruce Ruser of New Look Dry Carpet & Upholstery Cleaning, 303-697-1584, who uses an environmentally friendly system that utilizes plant-based ingredients. The website www.hostdry.com explains his process.  We use Bruce ourselves.

7) Replace older appliances. These can be affordable. Look for Energy Star ratings, too. I had a 1990s listing with its original white kitchen appliances. It just sat on the market until the seller replaced them with new appliances.

8) Install new door and window hardware. Brock quotes a 2021 Zillow report claiming that updated hardware has up to an 80% ROI, but I’d like to see your current hardware before suggesting this update.

9) Declutter and organize. This is more about staging than repair of something. We provide a free staging consultation for all listings, and our report always recommends decluttering, thinning and organizing.

10) Deep clean your home. Again, this is a staging matter. And it’s a no-brainer! We can refer you.

That concludes my version of Brock Pardo’s “top ten” list. I’d add the following two items:

11) Wash your windows. You’ll need to remove screens when you wash your windows, so don’t reinstall them. Label and store them in your basement or garage. Removing window screens has a effect similar to washing your windows, greatly improving visibility. If any of the screens are damaged (including sun damage), most Ace Hardware stores can rescreen them affordably.

12) Update your moldings. At a recent open house, a would-be buyer objected to the older stained wood moldings on the walls. She said they should be white, and I realized that she’s right. You could paint them white (priming first with Kilz), or replace them all with plain white moldings from a home improvement store.

Do you have your own suggestions of additional items? Let me know, and maybe I’ll feature them in a future column or on our blog.

A Good Loan Officer Can Help You Navigate Buying Before You Sell

Many people are ready for a move. They have substantial equity in their home that will fund the down payment on their new home, but because the inventory of homes for sale is so low, they don’t want to sell before they identify their new home.

While obtaining a bridge loan or a home equity line of credit to access equity are options, few buyers can qualify for them and doing so impacts their buying power for their new home. FNMA requires that lenders count a borrower’s current mortgage, the new HELOC payment AND the mortgage payment on the new house in the debt-to-income ratio that is used to qualify for the new loan. This means that unless they list and sell their current residence before finding a new one, their only option is to write an offer to purchase that is contingent upon the sale of their current home and unfortunately, contingent offers do not have much traction in our current market.

Enter the “Buy Before You Sell” program. Several lenders offer such a program. Jaxzann Riggs, owner of The Mortgage Network, explained the fundamentals to share with you.

Step one is for the “Buyout” company to determine the current value of your existing home. Step two is for you to contract with the “Buyout” company for the guaranteed sale of your current residence.

The Buyout company will then provide an interest free, no payment loan on your available equity to use as your down payment. Your realtor will then be able to write a noncontingent offer with your full available down payment on the new home, which will be your most competitive option. Because you have a guaranteed purchase for your current residence, lenders aren’t required to include the expense of your “departing” residence in your qualifying ratios.

The stipulations for the “buyout” are that once you close on your new home, you will have 10 days to list your current home and you must be under contract within 90 days. The Colorado Association of Realtors shows that year to date, the average home was on the market 62 days, which should be reassuring to those who are concerned about the 90-day time limit.

The cost for this program is 2.4% of the selling price of your existing home, paid to the buyout company when your home sells.

While this cost is not insignificant, consider what it is worth to you to eliminate the stress of selling first, and then having a time constraint attached to finding a home that you love. Also, there can be added costs of a rental property and moving twice if you do not happen to find your new home quickly.

Another cost that is important to consider is that if you don’t get any offers by the 90-day mark, the buyout company will execute its right to your home at a price that’s set at the beginning of the process. This amount will not be market value, but if they then sell your house for more, you will get the additional equity after their 2.4% fee has been collected. It is important to talk to your Realtor about the realistic value of your home, and strategies to ensure a sale within the 90-day period.

Jaxzann reports that while not suitable for everyone, using a “Buy Before You Sell” option can be a way for buyers to maximize their buying power, to take their time looking for a home that they love, and to write their strongest possible offer.

If you feel stuck in your homeownership journey, call Jaxzann at 303-990-2992 for more info.

Why Wouldn’t a Listing Agent Want to Maximize the Exposure of His Listings?

Although the average real estate agent barely makes a living and either has a second income source or a high-earning spouse, about 10% of agents earn a lot of money — and want to earn even more.

Myself, I make a very good living, as evidenced by the fact that I’m writing this week’s column while Rita and I are on vacation in Prague, capital of the Czech Republic. (I’ll be home by the time this column appears in print.)

But my business model does not involve doing every single thing I can to maximize my personal income. I get more satisfaction from trying to maximize my service to others, including my clients and the unknown readers of this blog. Since long before I became a Realtor, I lived by a motto that has mistakenly been attributed to Confucius. “Concentrate on giving, and the getting will take care of itself.”

My Denver Post column — what newspapers call an “advertorial” — is evidence of that strategy. As a former newspaper journalist trained on the metro desk of The Washington Post in 1968, I decided at the very beginning of my real estate career in 2003 that I’d spend my marketing dollars on buying newspaper space to publish a helpful real estate column.

It has paid off quite well. Unlike every real estate agent I know, I have never made a cold call or prospected in any way to get buyers and sellers to hire me. (This month, I just realized, is the 20th anniversary of getting my real estate license and starting as a broker associate at the Union Blvd. office of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage, now called Coldwell Banker Realty for some reason I have yet to learn.)

That column, which also appears in three Jefferson County weekly newspapers, is my sole outreach to potential clients, and every week I get one or more calls from someone who says, in effect, “I’ve been reading your column for many years, knowing the day would come when I’d call you to sell my home. Today’s that day!”

The above is a long-winded way of saying that I’m happy to abide by the Realtor Code of Ethics (and state law) which says I should put clients’ interest ahead of my own. This brings me back to the question posed in this article’s headline.

Last week, members of REcolorado, Denver’s MLS, received an email detailing how easy our MLS has made it to withhold a listing from all syndication, including Zillow, Redfin, and even REcolorado’s own consumer-facing website, www.REcolorado.com.

That email cast its guidance in the context of a seller requesting such limited exposure, but why would any seller give his/her listing agent informed consent to limit the exposure of their home’s listing to only their listing agent’s own website or circle of prospects? I suspect the only reason a listing agent would convince his or her client to approve such a strategy would be to maximize the chance that the agent wouldn’t have to compensate a buyer’s agent, thereby doubling his own commission earnings. That is not what anyone would call putting their clients’ interests ahead of their own.

Some Thoughts on War and Peace as I Vacation in Eastern Europe

As I write this on Monday evening, Rita and I are midway through our cruise of the Danube River from the Black Sea to Vienna. On Saturday we had a home visit at a village in Croatia. Our host family’s home was largely destroyed during the Serbo-Croatian war of the early 1990s, but they rebuilt it with help from the government. During that conflict they had to evacuate to another country. I remember those years well and can’t imagine what our life would have been like if it had included such fear, dislocation and destruction.

We already feel blessed to live in the Denver area, spared from the tornados, hurricanes, floods, mudslides, earthquakes (and more) afflicting fellow Americans, but being bombed and having to rebuild entire cities — that’s another matter entirely. Our guide told us that 91% of the buildings in the city where our ship docked were destroyed during World War II. Many buildings still show damage from that war.

And we can’t forget that a few hundred miles to the east of where we are, whole cities, including homes, hospitals and schools continue to be destroyed by Russian artillery.

Yes, we lucked out being born in America and choosing to relocate to Colorado. But we can’t forget the suffering of those — in America and elsewhere — who have suffered and continue to suffer.

As baby boomers, Rita and I are only a few years shy of being old enough to have lived through World War II. We didn’t witness it in real time, and we were raised to believe that such killing and devastation  was only something that occurred before our time. But we have seen too much conventional warfare elsewhere and should realize that America is indeed exceptional for having been spared the experience of warfare at home since our Civil War.

Last week we spent a day in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia and the former capital of Yugoslavia. Located strategically at the confluence of two rivers, it has been fought over through the centuries so often that it has been destroyed and rebuilt 40 times, according to guide books. Al-though it holds the prize in that regard, other European cities were destroyed by war multiple times. Can you imagine your city and your life including such a history?

If you, like me, had thought that the cycle of wartime destruction and rebuilding had been broken, you and I need only look at what Vladimir Putin is doing right now in Ukraine, leveling multiple cities and towns, committing verifiable war crimes by targeting apartment buildings, hospitals, churches and schools.

But shouldn’t war itself be considered a war crime?  We’d like to believe that Putin is the last world leader to justify in his own mind the bombing and destruction of another nation’s cities.

The creation of the European Union and the expansion of NATO gives us hope that European countries, at least, will not go to war with each other ever again.

Meanwhile, with the increased political division in our own country and the use of “civil war” language on the far right, should we worry that those millions of assault weapons in Americans’ personal arsenals might someday be used against fellow citizens perceived as enemies? Even posing that question would have been unthinkable a decade ago, but now it’s a valid and recurring topic of serious discussion. 

I wish more Americans would come to Eastern Europe, or at least Western Europe, to meet people who have in their lifetime experienced warfare at home. We have seen similar devastation from tornados in America, but imagine if those same scenes of devastation had been created by us Americans in a prolonged war against each other?

Please, let that not be our future!

Preparing for the Biennial Property Tax Process

Nobody likes taxes, but our Colorado property tax system is, in my opinion, among the fairest in the nation, so as we brace ourselves for the “Notice of Valuation” we’ll receive from our county assessor next month, I thought it useful to describe how it works and why I believe it to be relatively fair.

A 2022 post on the website Investopedia.com ranked Colorado as having the 5th “best” (i.e., lowest) property tax in the nation, behind Hawaii, Alabama, Louisiana and Wyoming. It calculated that the state’s “effective property tax rate” was 0.51% of a home’s valuation. Hawaii was lowest at 0.31% and New Jersey was highest at 2.31%.

However, that statewide average does not include the impact of metropolitan tax districts, which can nearly double the tax rate on a given home.  (This is a huge scandal which is only recently beginning to get the attention of legislators, who could, if they wanted, rein in metro district abuses.)

Putting aside that scandal for a moment, let me describe how property taxes are calculated in Colorado, as mandated by Colorado’s constitution.

The essence of the system is to have the county assessor determine the fair market value — that is, what every property could have sold for based on what comparable homes sold for — on June 30th of every even numbered year. That means that the valuation you receive in the mail next month will be what the county assessor, guided by mass appraisal software, estimates your home might have sold for on June 30, 2022.

That’s an unfortunate date this time around, because June 2022 may well have marked the peak of the Covid-19 era run-up of home prices in Colorado and nationwide.

An important note: Although the valuation date is June 30th of last year, it applies to what your house looked like on January 1st of this tax year. That made a big difference for victims of the Marshall Fire, because their home was worth next to nothing on Jan. 1, 2022, so the tax bill they received this year which covered 2022 should have been based solely on land value, not a repeat of their 2021 tax bill. If the fire had not destroyed their home on Dec. 30, 2021, the valuation of it from June 30, 2020, would have applied to property taxes for both 2021 and 2022.

Getting back to the process, once the valuation on your home is finalized following any appeal you might make, your tax for this year and next will be determined by applying your home’s mill levy to the assessed valuation, which is now 6.765% of your home’s full valuation.

I’ll use an example a home with a full valuation of $1,000,000. First of all, that figure is reduced by $15,000 under a law passed last year, so the assessment rate is applied to $985,000. Applying the above assessment rate, it would have an assessed value of $66,635, so if your mill levy is 100, then your tax bill would be $6,663.50. (It’s called a mill levy from the Latin word for thousand, so the levy is applied to every thousand dollars of assessed value. Thus, 100 x 66.635 = $6,663.50.

Keep in mind when you appeal your valuation that every $10,000 in reduced full valuation is worth only $676.50 in reduced assessed valuation. At a mill levy of 100, a full value reduction of that amount reduces your tax bill by only $67.65. That may not be worth arguing for, but a reduction in full valuation of $100,000 would be worth $676.50. And if you’re in a metropolitan tax district with a high mill levy, it’s worth even more.

Expect more on this topic from me in the coming weeks.