In real estate, professionals muse, the three most important factors are location, location, location.
The same appears to be true now in California when it comes to the ease of getting an accurate property tax assessment.
For the third consecutive fiscal year, the real estate market has faltered— unprecedented since property tax reform took effect with Proposition 13 in 1978 — calling into question the values of homes and businesses for tax purposes.
Assessors are required to come up with accurate values, but state law does not dictate how, and the process varies wildly by county: it can be simple, or a contentious ordeal.
“A lot of it is reflective of how the office operates,” Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, which advocated for Proposition 13, said of the state’s assessors.
Three years in, the different approaches of some assessors are emerging as mirrors of their communities: friendly in the suburbs, high tech in Silicon Valley, and in San Francisco — a city where a protest of some sort occurs nearly every day — cantankerous.
“It was very adversarial,” said David Zisser, who appealed the assessment of his Japantown condominium.
Mr. Zisser, a lawyer who spoke animatedly with his paperwork strewn across a table in the downtown Olympic Club, bought his home in 2005, near the height of the market, for $604,000. But in 2009, even after the housing market had collapsed, the San Francisco Assessor-Recorder’s Office placed its value at $653,000.
Mr. Zisser won his appeal — his 2009 assessment was revised to $572,000, then later lowered to $565,000 for 2010 — but he said the process took about 40 hours of work to research, file paperwork and shepherd his case through the system.
“Dragging people through this is ridiculous,” he said, noting that he is still waiting for refunds.
He is not alone: 6,600 assessment appeals were filed in 2009, and another 5,500 in 2010.
Phil Ting, the city’s assessor-recorder, who is also a candidate for mayor, said he hoped fewer than 5,000 property owners would appeal their 2011 assessments. Value estimates are being mailed this month.
Mr. Ting said he had been able to settle 80 percent of appeals without full hearings, which he considered an accomplishment given the size of the task. Property values throughout much of the city remain down from pre-recession highs, prompting many owners to seek reassessment.
“This is not a market correction.” Mr. Ting said. “This is like a U.S. economy correction.”
To cope with the situation, this year his office has proactively reduced the assessments on 18,841 of 200,000 total parcels in the city — eliminating the need for those owners to appeal.
But despite these efforts, Mr. Ting said that the antiquated computer system he inherited when he took office in 2005 was a hindrance. “Think of it as Fred Flintstone,” he said.
Those limitations mean that owners cannot see exactly how their properties’ values were determined until an appeal is well under way — a situation that creates contention and requires time-consuming efforts to find information elsewhere (frustrations I experienced firsthand when I appealed my assessment, and won).
“We would like to have a more transparent system,” Mr. Ting said, noting that his office has been working on improving the computer system.
By comparison, in Santa Clara County in Silicon Valley, as of this year homeowners can go online, enter a privacy code and see their account in detail, including the county’s math. Disagree with the result? An appeal can also be done online.
Larry Stone, the Santa Clara County assessor, said, “Each year we’re adding electronic functionality to do what we do.”
Mr. Stone said that since the new system was installed, the culmination of 15 years and millions spent on innovation, inquiries to his office had dropped by half.
In the Sacramento area, according to Mr. Coupal, the taxpayer advocate, reduction appeals were handled at amiable weekend workshops for property owners.
As in San Francisco, other counties have proactively reduced assessments in recognition of the downturn. In Santa Clara County, Mr. Stone said that this year 124,148 properties (one-third of the county’s total) were assessed below their purchase price.
“But they are not legally required to do so,” Mr. Coupal said of the proactive reductions. Ultimately, “the burden is on the property owner,” he pointed out.
In San Francisco, Mr. Zisser just received his latest assessment: up $15,000 to $580,000. He disagrees with that figure, but said appealing this time was not worth the grief.
“The city has made the process adversarial so people won’t go through it,” he said.
Scott James is an Emmy-winning television journalist and novelist who lives in San Francisco.
sjames@baycitizen.org
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/22/us/22bcjames.html