June is the Month for Property Assessment Appeals!

I have been working on Douglas and Sarpy county property assessment appeals for the last 16 days. There are two different ways property owners can base their appeal on.

1. The first way is valuation. By basing your protest on valuation argues that your property would not be able to sell at the value your property is currently assessed for. To make a good argument you need to find recently sold comparables. When finding these comparables the first thing you need to check is if the property is a foreclosure or short sale. These properties are not sufficient comparables to use. Next, you need to find comparables that are in the surrounding area, same style, and are close to the same square footage.
2. The second way to argue your property assessment is based on equalization, which means your property is assessed higher than another property in your neighborhood with the same style, square footage, and age. Appealing based on equalization was made much easier this year thanks to the Omaha World-Herald’s http://www.curbwise.com/.

On this website type in the address you want to appeal in the search bar. Once you have clicked on the desired address it will show you the neighborhood, subdivision, building style, number of bedrooms, bathrooms, finished square feet, price per square foot, and year built. Also, there is an image that shows what property evaluations stayed the same, went down or went up from last year in the neighborhood. There is also a list of all the properties in the neighborhood with their evaluation price from this year and last year. The only down fall to this website is that it only shows residential properties, there are no commercial or multi-family homes.

All appeals are due to the Sarpy and Douglas County Assessor’s June 30!