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Homeowners who face rising property taxes are often tempted to appeal. But in 2022, The Ascent, a Motley Fool publication, says that homeowners may not be as successful at lowering their bills as they may have in the past.
To be successful in a tax appeal, homeowners must prove that their home is overassessed. With rapidly rising home prices, that may be tougher to prove.
Property taxes are calculated by taking a home’s assessed value—the amount a local assessor thinks it could sell for—and multiplying it by the area’s local tax rate.
An appeal could prove more challenging next year because home prices have risen in many parts of the country. The National Association of REALTORS® has reported double-digit annual percentage gains in existing-home prices for the past year. In November, existing-home prices were up 13.9% compared to a year earlier.
Still, some homeowners may have success with an appeal. If they feel an assessment has risen by too much, they can appeal and show comparable sales at lower price points.
The amount that property taxes are expected to rise due to higher home prices will vary greatly across the country. Changes even in a home’s assessed value are not completed at the same time everywhere; some local assessors may do it in a cycle of one year or even five years.
“It depends on where you live as to when those changes in property values that we are seeing take place,” Marc Pfeiffer, senior policy fellow and assistant director at the Bloustein Local Government Research Center at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J, told Barrons.com.