What a Farce

So the latest housing assessments for our county came out on Friday. I’m feeling another challenge coming on, because this is getting plain ridiculous. In 2005, I successfully challenged them because they had clearly made an error in their assessment. This time, I may have to challenge them just for spite. On every house around me, including ours, the “building” portion of the assessed value went down by $125k. Good news, right? Sure, except that the “land” portion went UP by the EXACT same amount: $125k. The net effect is that our house has now had the exact same assessed value for the past three years running. What a load of crap. According to the county’s news release, 26,261 homes had their land and building values change, but not the overall assessment. Most interesting. The Vienna area in general had a -0.10% change in assessment values, which shows me that a lot of those 26,261 are in Vienna.
Time to go start gathering my evidence again. I’ve already found one “comparable” home that sold last August for $20k less than their assessed value. This should be fun.