Explaining assessments for Omaha property taxes

[Alexi Schreier]

Hey all, I'm from San Francisco and interested in Omaha because of it's strong economy, good school system, relatively low vacancy rate, etc. I also visited the area a few years back and met the nicest people  :)

I've noticed that property taxes are quite high in Douglas county and was wondering if someone could explain some numbers I came across on the Treasury's website.
After looking at a property I saw on Zillow selling for $135k, I looked up the property taxes on the Treasury's website to find that they amount to $3,289.78 for 2018 (see red rectangle in the screenshot). That seems quite high for a $135k home.

Looking at the Assessor's Valuation Page, I saw that the assessed value for the home is $153k (see green rectangle in the screenshot).

I have two questions:

1. Why is the property listed at 135k assessed at a value of 153k?
2. What could explain the jump in land value from $5.8 - 18k from 2016 to 2017?

Here are the links if you want to check it out:

https://payments.dctreasurer.org/taxinfo.xhtml?par...

http://douglascone.wgxtreme.com/java/wgx_douglasne...

Hope everyone's week is going well!

[Blake Berke]

Generally speaking, the property tax assessment should be no more than 80-90% of actually FMV in Douglas County. You can contest the valuation of your property through the county. If you were to purchase the property at $135k and prove that it was at FMV, you'd have a fairly strong case that the assessed value should be adjusted.

As for the large jump, the county did a huge reassessment in 2017 that caused a big stir in the community. Many of the assessments were correctly lowered due to the huge number of contested valuations - it felt like they shot really high knowing that valued needed increased, met people in the middle, and still got the large bump the wanted in the end. Here's an article: https://www.omaha.com/news/metro/property-tax-valu...