Time to Challenge Assessed Home Values in ABQ

Bernalillo County Assessor Karen Montoya will mail out Notice of Valuations for Real Property and Mobile Homes on Thursday, March 1, 2012.The Assessor’s Office will also begin its annual protest period for Real Property and Mobile Homes on March 1st. Subsequent to the mail out of the Notices of Values, property owners will have the opportunity to file a valuation protest within 30 days of the actual date of mailing.




How do you know if you should file a protest? I can check for you or you can estimate based on market value trends. The statistics for yearend show that the values went down about 6% last year. It varies by area but that is a rule of thumb you can use to compare last year's assessment with the one you get for 2011.



If you want me to help you decide give me a call and I will do a free market analysis for you. Also, you can go to my website and click on Market Snapshot to see what the values were for similar homes sold in 2011. If you decide to protest, I can provide you with three comparable homes that have sold which you will need for the protest. If that doesn't work, a good friend of mine is an attorney who specializes in protests. Give me a call and let me know how I can help you save money on taxes.

TAX LIGHTENING HEATS UP

So after two District Court judges ruled that the "tax lightening" regulation was unconstitutional, now they have apparently been intimidated by the Governor who wants a constitutional amendment proposition to make it legal. One of the judges is sending it to the Court of Appeals after saying she wouldn't to get a confirming opinion. In the meantime, I guess she is not going to rollback taxes in 2010 for those who have bought in the County of Bernalillo since 2002. And her attorney just quit in the light of 2000 plus filed appeals by these same taxpayers.

TAX LIGHTNING FIX STALLS

This just in from Stephanie Dzur on the Tax Lightning issue: I don't think those voluntary rollbacks are coming.
From yesterday's journal:
"Montoya said she is just trying to fix problems in her county that judges have ruled unconstitutional. She said she has experts studying every possible effect her plan could have on taxpayers and won't be pulling the trigger on the plan until she knows what the effects will be.
"I want everyone to know what could occur," she said.

And today David Chacon (her attorney who had advised her at the time she declared she was voluntarily rolling everyone back to 2001 plus 3%) e-mailed me that he's being replaced.

LIGHTS OUT FOR TAX LIGHTENING

This just in: Bernalillo County Tax Assessor plans to roll back property values for homes sold since 2002 to save tax payers thousands of dollars in the future. My friend, Stephanie Dzur, got this ball rolling when she brought a lawsuit against the Assessor claiming that increasing taxes of buyers with no limits versus 3% annual increase limits on others was unconstitutional. She won and then another taxpayer won with a different judge and just as Stephanie, an attorney, is collecting hundreds of taxpayers to file another lawsuit, the Assessor acts. Apparently, she doesn't want all those lawsuits and does see that the law is unlawful so is reversing it. It remains to be seen what the State will do and my other friend, Rick Homans who heads up the State's Tax and Revenue Dept. seems to be processing all this. The implications of the loss of revenue in the county and for the State is significant so this is a real catch-22 situation. Way to go, Stephanie.