Mrs. ACW and I got our housing assessment this weekend, and after reading about the ridiculosity surrounding other’s assessments, I was prepared for a mountainous raft of crap. Surprisingly, the value of my home did not go up by an umpity-hojillion percent, but instead increased at about the 33% rate detailed by the MD Dept. of Assessments and Taxation.
However, since we are talking about the guvmint, I’d be remiss to point out some of the things that they did get astronomically wrong.
The first thing they got wrong was deciding that we had a basement. Unless the MDDAT has been working tirelessly and silently digging out the crawlspace under our house and replacing gravel with complimented earth-tones and delightfully zany throw-pillows; or unless drainage-rocks and exposed beams with three feet of clearance between now counts as a basement, we do not have a basement. You’d think this would be easy to determine since we live in a duplex and share a roof, walls, and a foundation with our neighbors, and THEIR assessment (I looked it up online) properly indicates that they do not have a basement. However, I’m sure we can all agree that a simple double-check that would have been obvious to a fourth-grader is beyond the mental reasoning of a stadium full of bureaucrats. Hopefully, our magical basement will either appear at no cost to us, or be removed from the assessment soon.
The second thing that they got blitheringly, stupefyingly wrong, was the location of our house. Rather than placing our house on the tiny lot on which it belongs, we were placed about a block away, residing in the huge lot occupied by an apartment building. This stymies me for a number of reasons: first, they got our address right, and since we share the address with our neighbors (e.g. 123 Fake Street, Unit 1, and 123 Fake Street, Unit 2), and since they got our neighbor’s location correct, we should be located in the same lot; second, we share a roof, walls, and a foundation with our neighbors, SO HOW THE FUCK COULD OUR HOUSE POSSIBLY BE A BLOCK AWAY?
Jiminy fucking Christmas! You could fire pen-wielding monkeys scatter-shot out of cannons onto huge assessment forms and it appears they’d STILL get more right than the addle-pated drool-factories at the state.
You need to think fourth dimensionally, my friend. You may basementless and attached to another house right *now*, but what about at some other completely unspecified parallel-universe proxy time? There’s just no way of knowing.
Yah, whatever. “No basement.”
I think ACW is just trying to feign ignorance of the basement he keeps to store the corpses.
Right, ACW? Or perhaps, HHH (H.H. Holmes)? HMMMMM? :)
My neighbor and I are trying to find out why their is a $30,000+ difference in our assessments for two IDENTICAL townhomes, built at the SAME time, with all the same ammenities….
Jon- Yes, and in that dimension I’m probably being assessed by a state agency that’s competent and efficient. Zing!
SavageBliss- Shh! Shhhhh! Hush, I said!
Broadsheet- It is quite a puzzle, unless you’re one of those drool-factories at the state.
SB has rendered my dead hooker joke pointless. I leave here defeated.
The Olympian complexity of your grammatical construction deserves the gold.
I got mine as well. If I’m reading it and doing the math correctly I think it appreciated some 25% … yet I think I’m largely unaffected due to the 2% cap in AA county. At that rate I’d be foolish to appeal, or would I? I think I’m going to have to consult with someone. This stuff confuses me.
I got screwed. When you buy a new house there is no cap. You get to pay whatever the state wants you to.
RZV- Dead-hooker jokes are never pointless around here.
gibby- I know, there were some really lazy sentences in that one, but I couldn’t be bothered to get out my Strunk and White.
Alex- Wha? Cap? Now I’m confused.
DJ- You’re getting screwed because you’re a Republican and operate under the assumption that a Democratic legislature is out to get YOU without realizing that they’re out to get EVERYBODY.
Are they factoring your car and its Devaluation Power into this or not?
ACW: Check the top of the bill. I know it isn’t a bill, but it feels like it without as much imminence. Anyways, mine has a line on the lower right-hand corner (just above the fold) that reads “Box 1 reflects the 2% assessment cap established by Anne Arundel County.” Does that mean I’m already capped by the Homestead Tax Credit?
I work for the government–not the Assessor’s Dept, but close.
Apathy grows here like weeds in a vacant lot.
Have you seen the movie Office Space? Those are the people working on these assessments. It’s not that we’re lazy, it’s just that we don’t care. Also, if you want to know how your tax dollars are being spent…It’s 2:45 and I’m reading your blog.
The advantage to appealing your new assessment (mine went up 65%, one of my neighbor’s went up 194%) is that when you go to sell your house, you can say, “and the property tax is still only $X”. On the other hand, if a prospective buyer sees that the city thinks your house is worth $200K and you are asking $400K for it, they might hesitate.
I’m still debating appealing mine.
Meanwhile, the Homestead Tax Credit caps your increase at some percentage each year as long as you’ve owned the house for more than a year. I believe it varies from county to county. More importantly, at least in Baltimore, you MUST apply for it this year, even if you are already eligible for it. Or they will fuck you. Hard. With no lube. In your nose.