Are you sure the property records for your home are entirely accurate? This is something that many people never even think about. However, if the property records are not correct, there is a very good chance that the valuation of your property by the Fulton County tax assessor will be inaccurate. The valuation could be higher or lower than the actual value of the house, which is going to affect the amount of money you are paying on your taxes. Therefore, it is a good idea to make sure that you check the property assessment and make sure that all of the information is accurate.
If you have noticed that your property taxes are higher than they were, there could be several reasons for this. While it is possible that the value of the property and the neighborhood has increased, and this is what causes the change, there is also a good chance that the problem stems from an error on the valuation. If you feel that your property valuation is incorrect, you will want to follow the instructions on the inspection report and appeal the valuation with the Fulton County tax assessor.
How Does the Fulton County Tax Assessor Assess the Property?
You might be wondering how or why the valuation of your property might be incorrect. It might be that the information on the paperwork of the home has never been correct, for example. It could also be due to a more recent assessment being incorrect. The Fulton County tax assessor is simply not able to get out and physical inspect every property in person. Instead, they make use of records that are already in place to provide their valuation. They take the value, multiply it by the tax rate, and then determine how much you owe in taxes.
Some of the different types of information and data used by the Fulton County tax assessor include information regarding the square footage of the property, the size of the land, typically in square footage or acreage, number of bathrooms, whether there is a finished basement or a swimming pool on the property, and the condition of the property.
You will find that the tax assessor is also going to look at comp properties in the area. These are comparable properties to your property in terms of their location, their size, and other characteristics. They look to see the price for which those properties sold and use those numbers to help with their valuation of your property.
There are many areas where errors can creep into the valuation of your property. If you believe that the Fulton County tax assessor was not correct in their valuation of your house, that does not mean that you are out of luck. You are able to have your valuation reviewed, and you can appeal if you feel that you are paying too much, or even too little, on your taxes. You have to keep in mind that you will have a deadline to file your appeal, so you will want to act quickly.
The Next Steps
You will need to get in touch with the Fulton County tax assessor office to learn more about how they came up with the value for your property. There could be changes that have not been updated by the assessor’s office, or they could be using information that has errors on it that they are unaware of. Those errors could be errors about the facts of your property, or they could be typographical errors.
Learn what they were using and why they came up with the valuation they did. In some cases, they might see the mistake immediately. Other times, you will have to provide evidence and show them where and why the valuation was incorrect.
What Can Help With Your Appeal?
You need to be able to prove that the valuation of the property was not correct. First, you need to look at the assessment and make not of the errors, and then find evidence that will counter those errors. There are many different types of materials that you can use to help with this. Some of the commonly used items that people use as evidence include maps and land surveys, photographs, contractor reports, third-party appraisals from a professional, and even blueprints and architectural renderings.
You may also want to start collecting some comps of your own. You should have a minimum of five of them, and you should make sure that you are choosing properties that sold during the same period when the Fulton County tax assessor was assessing the value for your property. If you don’t show comps from the same period, the assessor’s office could cite market change as the reason for the discrepancy in the valuation.
Although you might not need to have all of these items when you are appealing your property valuation, it tends to be a good idea to get as much evidence as possible. It can help to improve the chance of getting the appeal that you want and need.
Even if the valuation of the property turned out to be too low, you might want to get an appeal. If you don’t, and you keep paying low property taxes, you might be paying less in taxes now, but it can come back to bite you when you try to sell. With a lower assessment, it means that people are less likely to want to pay a high asking price for the property.
Work With a Professional
Gathering all of the evidence and taking care of the paperwork, not to mention making sure that you are meeting the deadlines, can be quite a bit of work. Fortunately, you can make things much easier on yourself when you work with a professional company such as Fair Assessments, LLC. With more than two decades in the business, they can help you with your appeals and make the process much easier on you.
