Real estate question....

[Plantman]

What is the difference between the appraisal that an independent comapny gives you as the value of your home for refinancing or purchasing opurposes and what the county taxes your home on?

My house will sell for around 425-450K, yet the county appraisal comes in at 211 or so.

What gives here?

[Zeus]

My guess is that a lively local market can easily outpace the government/county's assessments, which generally take a lot of time and red tape to produce. Add to that the factors and conditions the gov/county usually use to assess a home can be dodgy or fail to capture certain favorable unique features, etc.

[dynalow]

The appraised value more closely resembles its current market value at the date the appraisal was made.

The assessed value is the value which municipalities and other taxing authorities base their taxes on. It is periodically updated by the municipality depending on state or local law.

A wide gap like you have indicates that your county has not reassessed recently or the market conditions have raised the values quickly or a combo of both.

Sooner or later, your County or municipality will be ordered to conduct a reassessment of the all the properties in its borders.

Here in NJ, a municipality is ordered to conduct a revauation (reassessment) when the average assessment falls below 80% (I think) of fair market value (appraised value).

Miami, like many areas, has seen a great spike in values over the last few years and, I assume, the market also cooled off there in 2006.

My town just finished conducting a reval. Now, things have definitely cooled off here and some in the mail tax assessments will no doubt exceed the market value in the short term. Not as desirable happening!

[jlomon]

The independent appraisal is usually conducted in conjunction with a mortgage finance application. The finance company wants to make sure that they aren't on the hook for a mortgage that isn't in line with the real market value of the house, in case there was ever a default. I think in most cases the independent appraisal will be higher than a city assessment because they are usually much more current. When we bought our last house the mortgage company wanted an appraisal, but only what they called a "drive-by" appraisal, which did not involve a detailed assessment of the property. I suppose if they found the house to be in poor condition, they would have asked for a full appraisal.

At the end of the day it is all about your finance company covering their a$$.

[TX76513]

Dynalow is right on - good explanation. I might add that there are two types of appraisals done by independents, comparative and cost. Cost will (almost) always will be the higher of the two

You are looking at your equalized value which is half of the estimated value they probably have a different name for it but that is what it is.

also when you refi make double dog sure its what you want because in florida you will get banged on the intangible tax every time.

[Dee8go]

Sometimes municipalities underassess property to prevent voter uprisings after a tax rate increase. That way they can start inching the assessments up after the rate increase has been accepted. Well, that's my take on it anyhow. Anyone else have any thoughts on that?

The assessments on my house for the last five years have been absolutely breath-taking. And I don't mean that in any positive way.

[dannym]

The city or county will most always be lower because they appraise "Real Value" as opposed to "market value".

I've seen houses worth maybe 100k selling for twice that amount.
people are absolutely insane when it comes to real estate.