One of the biggest questions people new to protesting have in learning how to protest property taxes is learning how to choose comparables. This article helps people learn exactly how to do that.
The biggest recommendation we have is to “do things the easy way.” 90% of the time, you can pick the 3 closest houses that the county selects. If the county gives you 10-15 houses that they claim are close to yours, probably 3 are actually usable for you.
The way to figure out which 3 is to look at all 10 on the online property websites. Look at the conditions of each house and see which one is closest to your own. Which house was built in the same year as your house? Which one is the same square footage, including any extras? For example, if your house has a finished attic, do any of the 10 have a finished attic as well?
The goal here is to find houses as similar as possible to your house in all aspects. Maybe you are looking at 2 houses, and one is a 1-story house, and the other is a 2-story house. Your house is a 2-story house, so you would pick the 2-story house, if they were the same size. But if the 1-story house was the same size as your house, and the 2-story house is twice as large as yours, then you would likely want to pick the 1-story house because the adjustment you would need to make to adjust the 2-story house would be bigger. The general principle is that the bigger the adjustment you need to make, the less accurate the valuation.
You want to pick the 3 most comparable houses, if possible. Probably 4 of 10 will not have pictures, so this is potentially a lot easier than it sounds – just pick the ones with pictures of the interior available! However, you will also have a use for the LEAST comparable houses, so rank all the houses you look at in order of comparability to your house.
The LEAST comparable houses are what you use to discredit the county’s analysis by pointing out that they never should have been used in the first place. For example, if their lot is 300% larger, or if their house is 50% your square footage, or 300% your square footage, etc. If one house is on 3.6 acres, on a hill top, and has a commanding view of the entire valley you are in, clearly it’s more valuable, if your house has no view and a 0.25 acre lot! Try to factor in everything when you make a decision on which house is comparable and which is not – view, lot shape, lot size, slope, house size and type, year built, square footage, other storage space, renovations, etc – all of it matters.
So now we know how to protest property taxes by choosing the right comparables. The next step, of course, is how to adjust those comparables.
