Recently a good friend of mine was telling me how high his property taxes were. Of course, I thought, you live in a pretty high end neighborhood. Even though his home is modest, I justified it by looking at the expensive homes nearby.
Now since my friend still lives in the dark ages and doesn't have a computer, I decided to go line and see how the assessment was broken down.
Remember I said his home was modest? It's a one story, 2-bedroom cape style, with an unfinished walk-up attic.
Or is it ??
Now, according to the town assessment this home has a fully finished second story. Not only that, it's signed off by the inspector saying that he personally visited the home and verified the information. Scary stuff.
After telling my friend what I found he went to his local town hall and spoke with the assessor's office. They were shocked and assigned someone to come out and visit his home and verifiy that the second story was not finished, and had never been finished. Once done, he went back to see about getting his tax bill adjusted. Only problem was, this happened in February and the bill had already gone out in January. The bills cannot be changed once they are issued, so he would have to pay another full year of incorrect taxes despite the fact that it was proven to be an error on their part.
Once I learned about this, I immediately pulled up my assessment - and found out that it says I have two full bathrooms. Actually, I only have 1 full bathroom and 1 half bath.
Since almost every community now publishes access to assessments, it's important to check yours to make sure there are no errors - your tax bill is based on this !
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