How to reassess your property tax ( Cincinnati Hamilton county Board of revisions)

[Jered Sturm]

I need some experienced investors help with Hamilton county's BOR. I have gone through the BOR process before however those were simple arms length transactions. Since the mls has dried up I have been buying off market deals. I for simplicity sake this thread is only asking about SFRs. My question is what does the board want to see for evidence of the new value? I have access to the mls so I can search all sold properties I'm just not sure how comparable they have to be to my properties to get them approved by the board. A few things that I question are: How long ago can a comparable sale be? How close does the age of the home need to be? How close in proximity do the homes need to be? If a property has more bedrooms but is similar otherwise can I use that as a comp to get my property reassessed? And lastly after I find a comparable sale do I simply print off the mls sheet, and that is enough? Thank you in advance!

[Mark Thompson]

We have a lot of experience with these BOR appeals.  Here's the process that you can do yourself, or you can hire someone like us (must be a real estate broker) or an attorney to do it for you:

1.  Compare your property's LOWEST defendable value to the auditors.  Your lowest defendable is either your sales price if bought within the last year, OR what non-foreclosure comps are selling for b/c they will throw out reo's and distressed sales.  If you bought the property a year ago and the auditor hasn't automatically adjusted it to your sale price (they do nearly 99% of the time) it will be a slam dunk to get it lowered.  If you've had the property for a while and are basically appealing their recent hike in their value, it's a little more work.

2.  If your lowest defendable value and auditors value is close, don't bother with the appeal.  If it's significant (subjective, but I would say a difference of 30% or more; ie auditor value 150k, you think you can defend 100kish) you have a better than 50% shot at getting it lowered.  The question will be how much.  

3.  Fill out the form from the auditors site to appeal your taxes.  Follow the directions EXACTLY as described (it is a govt entity after all).  Mail it in sometime between 1/1 and 3/31 each year.  You're appealing the PREVIOUS year taxes and any adjustments will stay until they do an auto reassessment ever 3 years.  Wait for your hearing date.  In rare cases, when you submit say a purchase contract showing you bought it recently for less, or if you send in some very strong comps or other acceptable evidence, they may lower without giving you a hearing.  This hardly happens.

4.  Show up early to the hearing with ALL your evidence and story prepared to defend your position.  The hearing is essentially a showdown between you and the county's contracted appraiser and the Board of Revisions job is to hear both sides and make a determination.  They won't say this, but the burden is really on you to overcome the appraisers opinion.  Your approach/position is likely going to be 1 of 2 things:  

A.  You just purchased the property within the last couple years and made a lot of improvements, therefore the property was only worth X (lowest defendable value) b/c it needed all these repairs.  You actually WANT to show all the work you did on it so they see it wasn't in good condition and shouldn't be evaluated with top-of-market comps.  This is effective b/c the appraiser doesn't have this info about repairs made so it can really help your outcome.

B.  You just don't like the value and you basically have to point out how the appraiser is wrong, not taking certain things into consideration, and/or how your comps are better.  This is tougher and really should be done by an experienced real estate broker or attorney who has BOR hearing experience.  

After about 15-30 min in front of the BOR, one of the members will move to do one of the following:  A.  accept your original requested valuation amount,  B. Move to keep the value the same,  C. Move to lower valuation to an amount somewhere in the middle as a compromise.  

Depending on how good your presentation and evidence is, you'll likely get either A or C as a ruling.  I've found the Board to be pretty reasonable, but they aren't going to lower the ruling if you're just in there complaining with weak evidence or a weak presentation.

Any adjustments of lowered taxes will be applied to your next tax bill or be sent to you in the mail, I've seen both.