Talkin Waukesha Real Estate Weblog

Wouldn’t it be nice if you had the ability to go to your employer and dictate your income based on the bills you owe?  If you have committed to pay out $4,000 per month, then you simply tell your employer I need to make $25.00 per hour to meet my monthly obligations.  Wouldn’t it be nice if the only way your employer could rebut the pay scale would be to file a formal appeal and go before a committee…. a government selected committee?

Guess what?  That’s what our City (Town) fathers have done with our  property taxes.  They determine how much they need and they assess our properties to fill in their budget.  If you don’t like it, you CAN appeal, but they still don’t have to make any adjustments; it’s up to them.

Know what else?  Their numbers are not very accurate.  In the last 60 days, for example, 50 homes sold in the City of Waukesha.  Only FOUR sold for at or above what the City is citing they were worth.  The average sale price is only 83% of the City’s Fair Market Value. (The Town is even further off at an average 76% of Fair Market Value).

What does that mean to you?  If the City says your home is worth $200,000 (that’s what they base your taxes on), you pay $3939 in taxes.  In reality, the value of your home is only $166,000 (what it would sell for), then your taxes would be $3,269.   Hmmmm…. that’s $670 for each over-assessed household (which looks like 92% of all the homes in the City).

When this majority of properties are valued this far off, who is holding the City accountable?

I just paid my taxes. I want my money back!

Comment by Leslie January 13, 2009 @ 1:40 pm

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If all of the property in a given area goes down in value based on the average selling price you could assume that the municipality has over valued all of the property in the area. If the municipality reduces everyones value accordingly all they need to do is increase the mill rate or the price per thousand of evaluation to collect the same amount of money. You need to get the municipality to reduce their over head or increase the number of properties on the tax role before you will ever see a reduction.

Comment by Peter Mozina January 13, 2009 @ 1:47 pm

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I don’t get what you mean by holding the city accountable. I would argue it is more cost effective in the long run to not do a massive city wide reassessment. What is the difference? So the city does a massive reassessment (which costs dollars). The city still needs ‘x’ dollars/yr. to run, so you’ll see your overall house assessment go down, but your overall property tax rate will then go up.

Comment by me in waukesha January 13, 2009 @ 2:41 pm

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The point is the City has set their budget based on assessed values, which based on recent statistics, have become arbitrary. If the assessed values are meaningless, then the accountability for run-away spending is tied to what? If the assessed values are at least reasonably representative of true value, there is at least one solid factor in the budget equation.

Comment by Diane McGeen January 13, 2009 @ 4:40 pm

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Bastards.

Comment by hotdog February 4, 2009 @ 11:12 pm

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