Property Tax Reassessment After Fire - Orange County, CA

[Kelly O'Quinn]

Hi All,

I apologize if this has been covered in another thread and, if so, appreciate if you could link to applicable existing threads (I did a search on here but was having trouble getting properly filtered results.) The property management company I work for manages a SFR in Buena Park, CA that had a garage fire back in January. Thankfully, the residents are all OK, since the smoke detectors went off in time for them to get out and call the fire dept. (just one of the many reasons yearly inspections are vital!) and it wasn't caused by negligence/poor wiring/etc., just one of those freak things. Unfortunately, the garage was attached to the home and there is significant damage to the home itself, causing it to be uninhabitable. I'm helping the owner fill out the Application for Property Tax Reassessment of Property Damaged by Misfortune or Calamity and have some questions regarding the values to put on the form.

On the form, we need to put down the value of the land, building/structure, and personal property before and after the loss, as well as the cost to cure. The assessor's office advised us to use the land value as stated on the property tax bill for the land value on the form before and after the fire, since there was no contamination of soil or anything else that would affect the land value. Where I'm having issues is on building/structure and value of personal property.

• Building/Structure
  • Should the value of the building/structure before the loss be the FMV of the property, less land value, or should it be the building/structure value from the property tax bill? The building/structure value from the property tax bill is significantly lower (approx. $700k lower) than the FMV of the property prior to the loss.
• Personal Property
  • The Assessor's Office said the owner can claim the value of the renter's personal property that was in the home prior to the fire as a loss, even though it's not technically the owner's property. This seems fishy to me and I'm concerned that by including the resident's personal property, we could end up in trouble down the road for claiming something we didn't have the right to. What do you think?

Has anyone been through this? What is the best course of action to take to protect the owner's best interest? I don't want to blindly follow the advice of the assessor's office and appreciate any help you can provide.