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/

Meanwhile, a separate report showed the number of underwater homes in the nine Bay Area counties slowly subsiding as values rise.

“It is starting to come back, there is no question,” Ting said. “San Francisco remains probably the strongest real estate market in the state.”

Throughout the housing downturn, San Francisco was a Teflon-coated county compared with the rest of California, with more moderate declines in real estate values than elsewhere. It was the only county in California that never saw its overall tax roll shrink during the downturn. For the 2012-13 tax year, the assessed values in San Francisco grew 4.17 percent, or $6 billion.

Commercial properties led the growth surge, particularly in emerging areas for biotech and technology firms: Mission Bay, the South of Market portion of the Financial District, and the Inner Mission.

“Even during this very challenging recession, we’re seeing (strength in) those markets driven by industries like life science, biotech and health care as well as tech companies,” Ting said.

Under Proposition 13, properties are reassessed by more than the annual 2 percent limit when they change hands, undergo significant renovation or are newly built. All three factors were at play in the surge in values in areas such as SoMa and Mission Bay.

Residential recovery

On the residential side, the recovery is more checkered, with weak areas particularly in the southeast and western parts of town.

Proposition 8, passed in 1978, lets assessments temporarily drop to match lower property values. Around the city, 15,811 properties got such reductions this year, averaging $175,980 in reduced value per home.

Ironically, Mission Bay, South Beach and South of Market – home to lots of new condos – were among the residential areas with the most Prop. 8 reductions, despite their boom on the commercial side.

“That whole cluster was heavily impacted and had the biggest overall declines in roll value,” Ting said. “They had a significant amount of new building, which created a bit of temporary oversupply.”

Lower-income areas, such as Bayview and Excelsior, continue to struggle.

“Those generally have been the softest real estate markets over the past couple of years,” Ting said. “They are entry points for the first-time home buyers. They were the first to show softness and the last to show strength.”

Meanwhile, perennially popular – and pricey – neighborhoods such as Pacific Heights, Noe Valley and Russian Hill saw assessed values rising.

“Areas that traditionally have been in high demand remain fairly strong,” Ting said.

Overall, Ting said, “I feel our recessionary recovery is U-shaped. We’ve definitely stabilized. It doesn’t feel like it’s jumping back in a sharp V shape the way it did in 2004 or 2005.”

Frothy market

Assessments look at property values as of Jan. 1, so this year’s exceptionally frothy real estate market is not yet factored in. But a report from real estate service Zillow showed that rising home values decreased the percentage of underwater properties between the first quarter and second quarter.

“It’s good news that negative equity is dropping, but we expect the overall recovery to be fairly slow,” said Stan Humphries, Zillow chief economist. “We are now mostly at bottom in most markets.”

Alameda and Contra Costa counties – two of the hardest-hit areas locally – saw significant changes in negative equity, which went from 33.8 percent of mortgaged homes in Alameda to 30.9, and from 42.8 percent in Contra Costa to 40.1.

“Besides a very healthy appreciation in home values, the high pace of foreclosure activity is also pushing negative equity down” in those counties, Humphries said.

That’s because once underwater homes are repossessed by banks and resold at lower prices, the new owners start out with equity through their down payments.

San Francisco stands out for having a relatively small pool of underwater homes.

“The big driver is that home values there are down just over 12 percent from their peak,” Humphries said. “That’s a very modest decline, which leads to a very low rate of negative equity.”

By comparison, Alameda values are down 37 percent from peak, Contra Costa almost 51 percent and Solano County almost 60 percent, he said.

Negative equity slowly subsides

The percentage of underwater homes, with mortgages larger than the value, decreased in every Bay Area county between the first and second quarters of this year.

Source: Zillow.com

Where home prices are rising

These neighborhoods saw the biggest increase in total assessments, which look at the values of all properties as of Jan. 1.

Source: San Francisco Assessor’s Office

Carolyn Said is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: csaid@sfchronicle.com

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/SF-property-values-rebounding-3814168.php

Still, area assessors pointed out that results were mixed. In some counties, most growth in assessments came from the annual 2 percent increase for inflation allowed under Proposition 13. In all counties, thousands of properties were worth less than their previous assessed value – the purchase price plus inflation – because 1978′s Proposition 8 lets the assessment temporarily drop to match the fallen property value.

“Remember, property values plummeted so low that we haven’t come close to making up the losses we’ve experienced,” said Jean Hurst, legislative representative for the California State Association of Counties. “This is no windfall by any means, but it’s a function of the stabilization and the gradual uptick that economists tell us the recovery will look like.”

San Francisco, Santa Clara and San Mateo counties had the biggest increases in the Bay Area, and among the biggest in the state.

“We are clearly on the way back up,” said San Francisco Assessor Phil Ting, noting that it is the only county in the state that never experienced a downturn in its property tax roll over the past few years. “We believe this is probably the last year that many homeowners will be getting a reduction (of assessed value) because the market is coming back.”

Silicon Valley growth

Both San Mateo and Santa Clara counties said they benefited from Silicon Valley firms’ expansion.

“The resurgence here is being led by business,” said Larry Stone, assessor for Santa Clara County, where the overall roll was up 3.25 percent. “The office market is on fire. As spaces lease up, they begin to build out the insides.”

Once businesses lease space and add staff, they buy equipment. That was apparent in both counties as the category of “business personal property,” which includes machinery, computers and fixtures, rose 6.48 percent in Santa Clara County and 5.45 percent in San Mateo.

Still, both counties had tens of thousands of homes that were assessed lower.

“It appears we’re gradually pulling out of the slump,” said Mark Church, assessor of San Mateo County, where the roll rose by 3.33 percent. “We’re moving in the right direction, but we’re not there yet.”

Property tax revenue is split among schools, counties, cities and special assessment districts. The plunge in real estate values resulted in an even tighter budget crunch for those entities.

This year, after three years of minimal or negative growth, Santa Clara County, with the biggest roll in the Bay Area – reflecting the value of Silicon Valley businesses and affluent residential communities – saw an extra $9.7 billion in assessed value. At a 1 percent tax rate, that translates to $97 million more in tax revenue.

But in Solano, the worst-performing Bay Area county, the roll was down by 3.12 percent or $1.22 billion, meaning $12.2 million less in tax revenue.

Wide disparities were evident even within a single county.

Take San Mateo, for instance. Atherton, where the cheapest house for sale is asking $1.595 million, saw assessed values rise more than 9 percent, but in East Palo Alto, where many home values hover around $300,000, the assessments were down 2 percent.

“We’re seeing sharp contrasts between the high-end locations and the entry-level locations,” Church said.

East Bay moderate

In East Bay counties, increases were more moderate.

Alameda County was up 2.14 percent, just a tad ahead of the inflationary increase. “It’s going to take a long time” to fully recover from the downturn, said Brian Hitomi, chief deputy assessor.

Contra Costa’s 0.86 percent growth was largely due to an appeals board decision that increased the value of Chevron’s Richmond refinery for 2007, 2008 and 2009. The tax bump for all three years is reflected in the 2012-13 roll.

“It’s a one-time thing,” said assessor Gus Kramer. “Anyone who hangs their hat on that economically going forward is a fool.”

Contra Costa’s real estate market is basically flat, he said.

“The market is bouncing on the bottom and trying to recover,” he said. “There are some areas that are pretty healthy,” such as the affluent communities of Danville, Lafayette, Moraga and Orinda.

Likewise, the North Bay was fairly stagnant, other than Solano County’s 3.12 percent decline. With towns like Vallejo ravaged by the foreclosure crisis, Solano reduced assessments for more than half of all properties. Since 2007, its roll has fallen by 17.16 percent or $7.849 billon.

Napa County saw a 2.06 percent rise, “mostly due to the inflationary increase,” said Steve Schellhamer, assistant assessor. “Although it’s positive, it would be premature at this point to declare that we’re out of the slump.”

Marin nearly flat

Marin County’s assessed roll nudged up just 0.82 percent.

“The good news is that we don’t see things going dramatically south anymore,” said Assessor Rich Benson. “I don’t think it’s time to say that the market has turned around yet, but we’re seeing some positive indicators.”

He and other assessors pointed out that home sales have been robust throughout the spring. Since assessments for the 2012-13 tax year look at values as of Jan. 1, 2012, those stronger sales aren’t yet factored in.

Sonoma County, which got an extension to close its roll in late July, expects it to be flat.

“I hope we’re close to the bottom,” said Bill Rousseau, chief deputy assessor.

Property tax assessments slowly rise

For the 2012-13 tax year, property tax rolls in most Bay Area counties edged up, even while thousands of homes still had assessments temporarily reduced because their values had declined. Assessments consider value as of Jan. 1, so the recent surge in the real estate market is not yet reflected.

{+1} In billions

{+2} Under Proposition 8, passed in 1978, properties are temporarily assessed lower when their market value falls below their previously assessed value – the purchase price plus an annual increase of 2% or the California Consumer Price Index, whichever is less. When the market rebounds, properties can be reassessed to this “factored base year value.”

{+3} Sonoma County numbers are estimates; roll will close in late July.

Source: County assessors

Carolyn Said is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: csaid@sfchronicle.com

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Property-tax-assessments-gradually-bouncing-back-3690479.php

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

But his ideas, in their way, are remarkably relevant now.

George proposed a simple taxation system in which land, but not the value of any buildings or improvements, would be taxed at a rate so high that it would satisfy all of government’s revenue needs. No complicated income tax code. No dog’s breakfast of special fees and gimmicks to balance government budgets. Just a confiscatory tax on land. “Georgism,” as its single-tax principle is known, would be devastating for real estate speculators and large landowners, but proponents say it would be painless for most everyone else.

Here in California, a state that has bled itself dry by radically reducing property taxes, it’s easy to forget that just a few decades ago Georgism had an avid following. None less than Willie L. Brown Jr., the former San Francisco mayor and State Assembly speaker, championed Georgist policies, sometimes with the support of John Burton, the longtime Democratic power broker.

Mr. Brown twice introduced state legislation to create a Georgist land-tax regime. “I was badly defeated with that legislation both times,” he wrote a fellow Georgist in 1973. “But I am still convinced that land-value taxation should be given a try.”

A few years later, voters opted instead to slash property taxes via Proposition 13. Mr. Brown moved on, first to an enormously successful (and centrist) political career, and then to his current gig as a high-powered lawyer who counts major real estate developers and corporate landowners among his clients.

But Mr. Brown was certainly in good company as a Georgist. Devotees over the years have included Leo Tolstoy, Winston Churchill, Sun Yat-Sen, and the inventor of the board game that would become Monopoly.

“Henry George was called the Prophet of San Francisco,” said Joshua Vincent, a Georgist and the executive director of the Center for the Study of Economics in Philadelphia. “He led a mass movement, a pre-socialist labor movement.”

George later moved to New York City and was a candidate for mayor when he died of a stroke four days before the 1897 election.

It’s easy to see why George’s theories and his most-famous book, “Progress and Poverty,” published in 1879, appealed to the young Mr. Brown. The grandson of slaves, Mr. Brown grew up poor in segregated Mineola, Tex., and came to San Francisco in 1951 as a teenager with little education and less money. He is an entirely self-made man.

“Willie Brown was one of the few who had the courage to speak up for this reform and actually introduce land-value tax legislation,” said Cathy Orloff, who in the 1970s ran the Henry George School in San Francisco, which offered classes in Georgism to hundreds of students. “People in the school greatly admired him for that.”

Mr. Brown did not respond to inquiries about his Georgist past, and he’s clearly not preparing to take up the flag again.

But Joseph E. Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning Columbia University economist, is stepping into the breach. In December, Mr. Stiglitz called for the adoption of “Henry George Principles” as part of his prescription to resuscitate the American economy. “Land does not disappear when it is taxed,” Mr. Stiglitz wrote in “Principles and Guidelines for Deficit Reduction,” a working paper for the progressive Roosevelt Institute. “Henry George, a great progressive of the late nineteenth century, argued, partly on this basis, for a land tax.”

Would California have fared better if Mr. Brown’s Georgist land-value tax had won widespread adoption? It’s almost impossible to contemplate, given how the economic structure of the state has been determined by private land development. Instituting land-value taxation in one fell swoop would cause the value of real estate to plummet, an outcome few would applaud.

But governments at every level are being forced to get creative as they seek new ways to finance basic public services, and if anything good is to come of the current catfight in Washington, it may be a renewed openness to all manner of budget-cutting, tax-reforming ideas.

The Prophet of San Francisco could yet have his day.

estevens@baycitizen.org

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/31/us/31bcstevens.html

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

For the past two legislative sessions, Mr. Ammiano has sought to close what he and many others see as a loophole in Proposition 13’s treatment of commercial property. Even if an owner sells his entire interest in a piece of commercial real estate, the property is not reassessed if no single entity acquires more than a half-ownership stake. It is easy for corporations to structure deals to avoid a tax increase.

Mr. Ammiano thinks it’s an outrage that companies can skirt the intentions of the law when properties change hands.

“You have very large commercial enterprises, Wells Fargo, Wachovia, with this little sleight of hand in the way they structure ownership,” he said Wednesday in an interview. “It is very, very dishonest.”

Yet the feisty Mr. Ammiano is quiet as a church mouse about altering the residential protections of Proposition 13 — of which he is a signal beneficiary.

Mr. Ammiano, who is also a comedian, pays just $530 a year in taxes on the Bernal Heights home he has owned since 1974. As far as the city and Proposition 13 are concerned, his house is worth $45,600. Zillow estimates its current worth at $645,000. At that value, the tax would be about $7,500.

How good a deal is this? Imagine for a moment that Mr. Ammiano’s house was a car. If he parked the car at a metered space near his Civic Center office, the amount he now contributes each day to the commonweal in the form of property tax would buy just a hair less than 29 minutes, curbside.

Perhaps his next stand-up routine could be built around this theme: San Francisco on $1.45 a Day.

There is nothing illegal about Mr. Ammiano’s good fortune. As long as a property does not change hands, Proposition 13 limits annual increases to 2 percent or the rate of inflation, whichever is less.

And he is hardly alone. The latest Case-Schiller survey for home sales in San Francisco reports a median market price of $760,000. Yet 23,059 of the 139,918 single-family homes in San Francisco are currently assessed at less than $100,000. If these properties were valued at the median, that would yield about $184 million in additional revenues; even valued at $500,000, they would generate an extra $114 million.

Of course, many people simply cannot afford to have their property taxes jump to market rates. Proposition 13 has delivered just what Howard Jarvis, its crusty champion, wanted: Older residents are not getting squeezed out of their homes by rapidly escalating taxes.

But you can make the case that the cost of that benefit has escalated out of all proportion to reason. It certainly looks that way to Anthony Costa, Mr. Ammiano’s next-door neighbor.

Mr. Costa, a City College librarian, bought his house — a mirror image of Mr. Ammiano’s — in 2004. He pays $8,300 in annual property taxes.

While he says he bears his neighbor no ill-will, what Mr. Costa does object to — strenuously — is the reduction in government services he attributes squarely to Proposition 13.

“Prop 13 is a tragedy which has made things in California worse every year since it was passed,” Mr. Costa wrote in an e-mail. “The people of California have to settle for inferior schools, libraries, transit, roads, sewers, parks and other services. I don’t object as much to my personal tax bill, as I do the obscene discrepancy between the great wealth of this state and the relative poverty of our government and public institutions.”

Even Mr. Ammiano agrees that it is unfair that he pays one-sixteenth the property tax of Mr. Costa. “My feeling is, there’s a need for reform, absolutely,” he said.

But that isn’t where he’s expending his energy in Sacramento.

A little defensively, Mr. Ammiano, 69, noted that he had not availed himself of every opportunity to whittle down his property tax bill. “There is a senior-citizen exemption for homeowners tax in San Francisco,” he said, “and I do not take advantage of that.”

Actually, there used to be such a tax break. It was suspended in 2009, according to the city assessor’s office — a victim of state budget cuts.

estevens@baycitizen.org

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/03/us/03bcstevens.html