Foreclosures were a common sight in many towns, such as San Pablo (pictured), just two years ago. Now with fewer foreclosures and home values surging, many people who got a temporary property-tax reduction will see a bump up this year. (Chronicle staff photo)

It’s a letter from Larry Stone or Ron Thomsen or Gus Kramer or another Bay Area county assessor.

You open it up and your eyes pop. Steam starts coming out of your ears like a little cartoon character.

Your property taxes are going up by a hefty amount for the 2013-14 tax year.

What happened? What about California’s Proposition 13, which guarantees a 2% annual cap on property tax increases?

Think back to 2009, when a similar missive arrived. Remember what a relief it was that your property taxes were slashed by about a third? Your house had plunged in value due to the real estate downturn. Under Proposition 8* — a companion to Prop 13, also passed in 1976 — assessors are supposed to cut your property taxes  temporarily when your home’s market value goes below your previous assessed value. That went on extensively throughout the state over the brutal downturn; it’s one reason cities, counties and California itself had to tighten their belts so much.

But the key word is “temporarily.” That same Prop 8 requires assessors to bring the values back up when the market recovers. It can go up by a big chunk. There is still a ceiling.  The maximum you can be assessed is what’s called your “factored base value.” That’s you original base value (what you paid for the house) plus 2% a year increases (or even less; if the California consumer price index is lower than 2%, that gets used instead).

Thousands of people will be getting these notices in coming weeks.  For instance, in Alameda County, 9,800 properties are being fully restored to their “factored base value” after having had a temporary tax cut. Another 69,000 are being partially restored in sync with the changing market. In San Francisco, 4,900 properties are being fully restored, and another 9,900 are being partially restored.

All the assessors have extensive explanations about Props 8 and 13 on their websites. The one on the Sonoma County Assessor’s website has a helpful graphic showing the interactions between Prop 13 values and Prop 8 market values.

Assessors are hopeful that homeowners will see the bright side.

“We are getting out of the market-value reductions and increasing our values,” said Ron Thomsen, Alameda County assessor. “It’s good for homeowners as they see increases in the equity of their homes.”

But many folks may not be jazzed about this.

Still, for the counties, cities, special districts and schools that depend on property-tax revenue, it’s definitely good news that the assessments are going up after several brutal years of steep declines. For a detailed look at what’s happening for Bay Area county assessments, click here. For more information about the impact on homeowners, click here.

Remember, you have the right to appeal your property-tax assessment — and you definitely do not need to pay anyone else to help you with this. Information on filing an appeal is available on each county assessor’s website.

*Not the Prop 8 about same-sex marriage that just went to the U.S. Supreme Court. California thriftily recycles proposition numbers; it wouldn’t be that catchy of a slogan to say: “Vote for Proposition 46,787?!

Carolyn Said is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. For news and insights on Bay Area real estate, follower her on Twitter: @csaid

Article source: http://blog.sfgate.com/ontheblock/2013/07/05/brace-yourself-your-property-tax-bill-is-on-its-way/

Foreclosures were a common sight in many towns, such as San Pablo (pictured), just two years ago. Now with fewer foreclosures and home values surging, many people who got a temporary property-tax reduction will see a bump up this year. (Chronicle staff photo)

It’s a letter from Larry Stone or Ron Thomsen or Gus Kramer or another Bay Area county assessor.

You open it up and your eyes pop. Steam starts coming out of your ears like a little cartoon character.

Your property taxes are going up by a hefty amount for the 2013-14 tax year.

What happened? What about California’s Proposition 13, which guarantees a 2% annual cap on property tax increases?

Think back to 2009, when a similar missive arrived. Remember what a relief it was that your property taxes were slashed by about a third? Your house had plunged in value due to the real estate downturn. Under Proposition 8* — a companion to Prop 13, also passed in 1976 — assessors are supposed to cut your property taxes  temporarily when your home’s market value goes below your previous assessed value. That went on extensively throughout the state over the brutal downturn; it’s one reason cities, counties and California itself had to tighten their belts so much.

But the key word is “temporarily.” That same Prop 8 requires assessors to bring the values back up when the market recovers. It can go up by a big chunk. There is still a ceiling.  The maximum you can be assessed is what’s called your “factored base value.” That’s you original base value (what you paid for the house) plus 2% a year increases (or even less; if the California consumer price index is lower than 2%, that gets used instead).

Thousands of people will be getting these notices in coming weeks.  For instance, in Alameda County, 9,800 properties are being fully restored to their “factored base value” after having had a temporary tax cut. Another 69,000 are being partially restored in sync with the changing market. In San Francisco, 4,900 properties are being fully restored, and another 9,900 are being partially restored.

All the assessors have extensive explanations about Props 8 and 13 on their websites. The one on the Sonoma County Assessor’s website has a helpful graphic showing the interactions between Prop 13 values and Prop 8 market values.

Assessors are hopeful that homeowners will see the bright side.

“We are getting out of the market-value reductions and increasing our values,” said Ron Thomsen, Alameda County assessor. “It’s good for homeowners as they see increases in the equity of their homes.”

But many folks may not be jazzed about this.

Still, for the counties, cities, special districts and schools that depend on property-tax revenue, it’s definitely good news that the assessments are going up after several brutal years of steep declines. For a detailed look at what’s happening for Bay Area county assessments, click here. For more information about the impact on homeowners, click here.

Remember, you have the right to appeal your property-tax assessment — and you definitely do not need to pay anyone else to help you with this. Information on filing an appeal is available on each county assessor’s website.

*Not the Prop 8 about same-sex marriage that just went to the U.S. Supreme Court. California thriftily recycles proposition numbers; it wouldn’t be that catchy of a slogan to say: “Vote for Proposition 46,787?!

Carolyn Said is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. For news and insights on Bay Area real estate, follower her on Twitter: @csaid

Article source: http://blog.sfgate.com/ontheblock/2013/07/05/brace-yourself-your-property-tax-bill-is-on-its-way/

After two years during which tax rolls in most of the nine Bay Area counties shrank, often by large margins, this year property tax rolls are fairly flat compared with last year, the assessors said. Admittedly, they’re being compared with a lower base.

“We’re in a holding pattern,” said Marc Tonnesen, assessor for Solano County, one of the areas hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis. Solano’s tax roll was down just 1.56 percent this tax year, after falling 3.62 percent last year and 11 percent the year before. Two cities, Benicia and Fairfield, actually posted gains in their property tax rolls, he said.

One trend is that assessors are starting to restore assessed value to some properties whose tax bills were reduced during the downturn. Under California’s Proposition 8, assessors must reduce a property’s tax value when it drops below the market rate and then restore the value as the market improves.

“We’re beginning to see signs, however meager, of improvement in the market,” said Larry Stone, Santa Clara County assessor. The county partially restored value to 45,000 properties, largely in more affluent areas, he said. Overall, Santa Clara’s assessment roll was up 0.88 percent this year.

Its gain was almost perfectly in line with the increase in inflation allowed under Proposition 13. Under Prop. 13, properties’ tax value can increase 2 percent per year or by the California consumer price index, whichever is less. This year the index was 0.753 percent. (The increases in value for previously reduced properties are an exception to the Prop. 13 cap.)

Santa Clara, whose county seat is San Jose, acts as a leading indicator of market trends, said Bill Rousseau, chief deputy assessor in Sonoma County. “It’s usually a couple of years ahead of the Bay Area,” he said. “In the 1990s, after the downturn, Santa Clara came back about two years before we did.”

San Francisco, which has been the most bulletproof county during the downturn, was the only one where the roll rose last year (by 4 percent). This year, it was up by 1.3 percent, the biggest increase of any county.

“Our residential market bottomed out last year and it is still on the road to recovery,” said Assessor Phil Ting. “We haven’t seen properties being restored to prior values yet, but we will probably see that in the next year or two.”

Some hard-hit counties are still struggling to dig out. Contra Costa’s tax roll was almost flat after falling 3.39 percent last year and 7.6 percent the year before. About half of the properties – 180,000 – got their assessments reduced because they’re worth less than their base year factored value (the sales price plus the annual inflation factor). While 2,000 properties saw some values restored, most were bumped up only marginally, said Gus Kramer, county assessor.

Compared with coastal areas with job centers, Contra Costa lags, he said.

“Santa Clara and San Francisco counties are both basically hubs of the high-tech industry,” he said. “We don’t have that here in Contra Costa. Unemployment is still extremely high in this county.”

Meanwhile, San Mateo County has not seen a recovery yet, said Assessor Mark Church. “The market is still struggling to correct and is weak,” he said. “We continue to experience declines in value in some areas but we’re also experiencing some restorations in value.”

Alameda County is a microcosm of the scattershot way real estate markets recover. While 83,700 properties were assessed lower than their base value this year, 22,800 had value partially restored (which still means they are lower than base year value) and another 2,600 were fully restored to their pre-downturn values, plus the annual inflation factor.

Properties getting a bump up in value after having declined “seem to be all over the county in different (price-point) stratas,” said Assessor Ron Thomsen.

E-mail Carolyn Said at csaid@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page D – 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/09/10/BUJG1L0PG9.DTL