Did you open your letter from the DC Office of Tax and Revenue this week and do a double-take?
Are you thinking about appealing your home’s assessed value?
Kymber Lovett-Menkiti, President of Sales for MG Residential, breaks down the DC Property Tax Assessment process and appeal options available to homeowners. But ACT FAST – the appeal deadline is looming!
Last week, DC’s Office of Tax and Revenue (OTR) announced that the 2017 Tax Assessment notices were being mailed out with a total of 196,548 real properties being reassessed to reflect current market values as of January 1, 2016. The new assessed value does not go into effect until March 2017, although the opportunity to appeal the value ends on April 1, 2016. So you have a little less than a month to complete your appeal.
Your 2017 real property assessment notice contains not only the proposed assessed value for your home, it also includes the estimated taxable assessment and information related to both the homestead benefit and senior citizen tax relief, if you are receiving either of these benefits. (If you are an owner-occupant in your home or you’re older than 65 and not receiving a property tax benefit, you should be: CLICK HERE!)
Now, if you are like me, you may be wondering what factors were used as the basis for determining your property value and what options you have if you don’t agree. We have outlined the appeals process below and how we can help make the process a little easier.
The District gives each property owner an opportunity to appeal the proposed value before April 1, 2016. The appeals process can be initiated by submitted a First Level Appeal directly to OTR. It can be completed on-line or through a Request for Meeting via telephone or in-person meeting with the assessor.
If you decide to appeal your property value based on local comparables, we strongly recommend providing documentation in advance to support your challenge of value. There are two major categories for this:
- Estimated Market Value: Do you have a recent written appraisal, recent settlement statement, or property insurance documents? Either of these three can used as supporting evidence for your appeal.
- Equalization: This is the data that MG Residential can help you provide in sharing a list of recent sales that are comparable to your home that provide direct evidence of recent sales activity in the immediate area. We provide listings of comparable properties to our clients and neighbors on a regular basis when helping them determine the sales price, preparing for a refinance appraisal, and to support a property tax appeal. Feel free to reach out to us if we can be of assistance in putting comparables together for an equalization based appeal.
The appeal can also be based on property classification or property damage/condition. If your appeal is based on one of these two categories, you should contact OTR directly at (202) 442-4332 for a separate appeal form.
We provide listings of comparable properties to our clients and neighbors all the time – let us know TODAY if we can assist you with this portion of the process.
There is a silver lining in the world of DC property taxes: your real estate taxes can only go up 10% in a given year, so while your assessed value can go up the reflect the market movement, your overall taxes owed to DC can only go up by 10%!
