June 2000
Appealing Site
Putting the Web to work to fight assessments that are overblown.
By Joan Goldwasser

The booming housing market affects more than just buyers anxious to outbid one another for the right to own the house of their dreams. It can also drive up your home's assessment, leading to a dramatic increase in your property-tax bill. That raises the stakes for making sure your assessment is fair.

A new Web site makes it easier to do just that. Domania offers an instant look not only at recent sale prices for homes in your neighborhood but also at the homes' tax assessments. The site claims to have information on 75% of all houses sold since 1987.

The next time you get a property-tax assessment, log on to the site, which is free, to check recent sale prices and other assessments in your neighborhood. Domania covers 29 states so far, though some counties may be missing. If your search draws a blank, ask local officials if assessment information is available elsewhere on the Web. (If not, you can always look up records the old-fashioned way.)

And if your home's assessment seems out of whack, consider an appeal. Domania offers basic advice on appeals and will soon have a resource center with filing dates, forms, addresses, phone numbers and Web sites to contact your local tax authority.

Don't wait until your tax bill arrives; by that time, the appeals deadline may have passed. Act as soon as you get the assessment. The first step in an effort to drive down your bill is to visit the assessor's office to review the land survey for your property. Make sure the dimensions it shows are accurate. Similarly, confirm that there are no errors in the tax records about your house's size, age, number of bathrooms, and so on.

Also, ask how your community assesses property for tax purposes. Some jurisdictions use 100% of current value; others assess a percentage of that value.