Quote:
Originally Posted by spinner1001
Government property appraisers have a different mission than ordinary real estate appraisers. Since it is the government, they are expected to strictly follow principles of fairness, equity, and so on. Overall, government property tax officials must also be practical because their work and outcomes are part of politics with reelections for property appraisers and avoidance of mass outrage of citizens complaining about their assessed property values for paying taxes. Put simply, few citizens complain if their tax assessed property values are less than what their neighbor’s house sold for.
The activity that government property appraisers do is called ‘mass appraisal’. For ordinary residential properties, mass appraisals almost certainly use computers, statistics, and sophisticated valuation models to annually assign assessed values to thousands of homes with relatively little human intervention. Ordinary real estate appraisers generally don’t do any of that and instead look at the sales prices of several homes in your neighborhood and make some adjustments for different characteristics such as swimming pools and renovations.
If you think this is in the weeds, you might look over the document at the link below that describes professional standards for mass appraisals that government property appraisal do. It is quite technical.
https://www.iaao.org/media/standards...sAppraisal.pdf |
When I lived in Georgia, the market values set by the county appraiser were often higher than the actual market values. One year, my house was appraised at $30K above what the house was actually worth. The appraiser gave me a few addresses that he used to set the value. However, those houses were waterfront properties. Apparently, he had deliberately selected high value properties to raise the appraisal. That was the only time I ever appealed my tax bill and I won the appeal.