San Francisco

San Francisco Property Tax Reduction Appeals: Informal Reviews & Formal Appeals for the 2012/2013 Tax Year

If you believe your home may be eligible for a reduction in property taxes based upon a decline in value, there are two ways you might proceed: an Informal Review by the San Francisco Assessor’s office and/or a Formal Appeal with Assessment Appeals Board. The Formal Appeal, in particular, can be a complicated and time consuming process. Generally speaking, homes purchased 2005 through 2008 (the time of peak values in most SF neighborhoods) have the best cases for a property tax reduction. Declines from peak value in the city generally range from 12-25%, though it all depends on the exact time, location and terms and conditions of your purchase. If your appeal is successful, the reduction in assessed value only applies to the 7/1/12 – 6/30/13 tax year. A decline-in-market appeal is only good for 1 year, the year for which it is filed.

If you need help gathering comparable sales data with which to make your case, let me know. You may also hire a professional appraiser. The Assessor’s “valuation date” is January 1, 2012, so the nearer your comparable sales are to that date, the better. However, all sales comparables submitted must have closed before March 31, 2012.

Since policies, procedures and forms may change, please verify all information contained herein directly with the appropriate governmental agency.

Requesting an Informal Review
The SF Assessor’s Office has announced that they will now accept “Requests for Informal Review of Assessed Value” for tax year 2012/2013. Such requests must be filed by March 31, 2012 and apply only to single-family dwellings, residential condominiums, townhouses, live-work lofts and cooperative units.

One can email the Assessor’s office with questions (Assessor@SFGOV.ORG), as well as call or visit the Assessor’s office in City Hall (Room 190) to speak with the appraisers that are on duty (415-554-5596). And the SF Assessor’s website offers forms and information regarding Decline-in-Value Informal Reviews:

SF Assessor’s Office: Online Request Form

SF Assessor’s Office: Frequently Asked Questions

2012-2013 INFORMAL REVIEWS – FAQs

Q1: I BELIEVE THE MARKET VALUE OF MY PROPERTY IS LESS THAN MY CURRENT ASSESSED VALUE. HOW DO I PROTEST MY VALUE?

First, check your current assessed value at http://gispubweb.sfgov.org/website/sfparcel/index.htm. Second, if the assessed value is higher than the market value, you have the following options:

REQUEST AN INFORMAL REVIEW (single family dwellings, residential condominiums, townhouses, live-work lofts and cooperative units only) – From January 3, 2012 to March 30, 2012, the Assessor will accept requests to review the market value of your property. Your request must be in writing by completing an on-line application with supporting evidence of your opinion of value. If you were granted a reduction for the year 2011-2012, we will automatically review your assessment for the year 2012-2013 to determine whether a reduction is still warranted. Please send mail-in requests to: Assessor-Recorder, ATTN: Informal Review, 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, City Hall – Room 190, San Francisco, CA 94102. Mail-in requests for an informal review must be U.S. postmarked by the March 30, 2012 deadline. By Fax: (415) 554- 7915 or E-mail: InformalReviewRP@sfgov.org. Be sure to keep a copy for your records.

FILE AN ASSESSMENT APPEAL (All property types) – From July 2, 2012 to September 17, 2012 you may file an Application for Changed Assessment with the Assessment Appeals Board (AAB), an independent body established to hear and resolve valuation disputes between the Assessor and taxpayer. A $60.00 filing fee due at the time of application and the AAB will schedule a hearing for you at a later date. Applications may be obtained by contacting the Assessment Appeals Board – Clerk of the Board at 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, City Hall – Room 405, San Francisco, CA 94102, by phone: (415) 554-6778 or directly from their website: www.sfgov.org/AAB.

Q2: CAN I, AS THE OWNER OF A SINGLE FAMILY DWELLING, DO BOTH PROCEDURES?

Yes. If upon the receipt of your annual Notice of Assessed Value, which will be mailed at the end of July 2012, you disagree with the assessed value, you can file an assessment appeal with the Assessment Appeals Board. Please see instructions above.

Q3: WHAT DOES MARKET VALUE MEAN?

Market value is the price a property would sell for when the property is put up for sale in a competitive and open market.

Q4: WHAT IF MY CURRENT ASSESSED VALUE IS BELOW MARKET VALUE?

The Assessor is required to enroll the lesser of your factored base year value (assessment) or the market value. For example, if the market value (what you could sell your house for) of your property as of January 1, 2012 is $500,000 and your assessed value is $200,000 the Assessor would enroll the $200,000 as your taxable value. You would not qualify for a lowered assessment.

Q5: WHAT TAX YEAR AM I APPEALING?

The assessed value being appealed will cover the fiscal year from July 1, 2012 to June 30, 2013.

Q6: WHAT TYPE OF INFORMATION WILL I NEED TO PROVIDE TO SUPPORT MY CLAIM?

You will need to submit sales information and/or an appraisal performed by a licensed real estate appraiser to support your claim. The sales information or appraisal’s date of valuation should be near the January 1, 2012 lien date but no later than March 31, 2012.

Q7: IF THE ASSESSOR OR THE ASSESSMENT APPEALS BOARD AGREES TO REDUCE MY VALUE, WILL THE NEW ASSESSMENT BE PERMANENT?

No. The reduction is temporary and only applies to the tax year being appealed. Once a reduction is made, the assessor is required by law to annually reappraise the property until its fair market value exceeds the factored base year value.

Q8: WHY ARE TENANCY-IN-COMMON (TICs) UNITS EXCLUDED?

Unlike residential condominiums and cooperative units, TICs do not have separate parcel numbers. A review of a single TIC unit is more complex. TIC owners can appeal their taxes by filing an Application for Changed Assessment with the Assessment Appeals Board beginning July 2, 2012 thru September 17, 2012.

Q9: WHEN WILL I BE NOTIFIED OF THE RESULTS OF MY INFORMAL REVIEW REQUEST?

Homeowners will be notified of the results of their informal review in the annual Notice of Assessed Value which will be mailed at the end of July 2012.

Making a Formal Appeal
The next open formal appeal filing period for San Francisco will be July 2, 2012 to September 15, 2012 — to appeal the 2012/2013 assessed value of your property. A formal appeal can be made for multi-unit and commercial properties, as well as for regular residential housing units. There is a non-refundable $60 processing fee and an additional hearing fee, which typically runs $50 to $100 for SF residential properties.

Since they are open to the public, it is possible to attend the assessment appeals board hearings of other people to see how they work.

These online resources offer important details regarding the filing of a formal appeal:

Formal Appeal Overview

Forms & Documents

Fees

Publication 30: “Residential Property Assessment Appeals”

There is a very good video on the formal assessment appeal process. This video is divided into the following sections: Introduction, Decline in Market Value, Base Year Value, Reassessment After Calamity, Escape Assessment and Roll Changes, Filling Out the Application, Preparing for Your Hearing, and Your Hearing. If you wish to proceed, it is highly recommended you view this video:

Informational Videos on Property Tax Appeals

All information herein is from sources deemed reliable but is subject to change, error and omission, and not warranted. Interested parties must contact the appropriate government agency to verify and confirm all pertinent guidelines and procedures.

An Eye on the Past: Crowd Sourcing Feeds Historic Street Map Database

CITK Josh Bleecher-Snyder alerted me the Sanborn Maptcha project that KQED members have been helping with.  Josh writes:

 “You should check out the maps linked to from http://blogs.kqed.org/newsfix/2011/08/16/mapping-project-reveals-pre-earthquake-san-francisco/ — we managed to find our house (cropped excerpt attached to this email). In addition to being super cool, it could be a good resource for any clients looking at a pre-1906 building who want to know what the plan or layout of the building was ages ago. Ours confirmed our suspicions about our lot having been split, about the back part of the building being an addition, and about the lower floor having been split in two after construction.

 So who knows what you could find about your house?  Click here to find your street!

Super cool it is Josh!  Thanks for sharing!   (Josh is good at super-cool things in general and is co-founder of card.io which allows you to securely scan your credit card with your smartphone to buy things rather than typing in the number.)

105 Years Ago Today, the City Was in Flames

And look at her now:

source: www.flickr.com (click to see the whole set!).

This picture was taken in November 2010 by a pilot from Napa.  My dad sent me the link.  This picture brought out the giant sap in me.  Not as many tears as that ride at Disneyland, Soaring Over California, but this image reminds me how lucky I am to be here, in the best place on earth.  It’s worth the risk, the expense and the small closet to be able to say, “that’s home.”

But speaking of risk, there is a serious one that in the event of a major earthquake it could be 72 hours before you and your family can reasonably expect help from an outside source.  If you have not invested in making an emergency plan (or if yours needs a touch up), this little card can help:

click to enlarge

How do Distress Sales Affect Median Prices in San Francisco?

Distress home sales – bank-owned properties and short sales – have a major impact on the overall median sales price in San Francisco, even though the city is much less impacted by such sales than the greater Bay Area or California. In actual numbers and as a percentage of sales, distress sales have been increasing in the city in the first quarter of 2011 – now running at 20% – 25% of sales — and since distress sales are by far the lowest-priced sales, they drag down the overall median price for San Francisco. (The median price is that price at which half the sales occur for more and half for less, so it is mostly affected by the quantity of sales at different price points. It has no relation to average sales price.)

The median sales price in March in SF dropped 5% from March 2010, (from $710,000 to $675,000) and it is mostly because of the increasing number of distress sales. But if we break down the statistics, we find that the median price for distress sales over that period dropped from $470,500 to $441,000, but the median price for regular home sales stayed virtually the same, actually going up a tad from $750,000 in March 2010 to $759,500 in March 2011. That is, distress sales are impacting the overall SF median price due to their increasing numbers and decreasing prices, but not the overall, regular, non-distress median home price.

In fact, the regular median-home price has been generally stable for the last 20 – 24 months, and shows no sign of declining.

Why is that? It’s because distress sales are clustered in specific neighborhoods and impact the values there, while having little or no impact on most of the neighborhoods of San Francisco. If you want to buy a house in Pacific Heights, the fact that you can buy a foreclosure house, with the fixtures ripped out, in Bayview doesn’t make much difference to you. To a large degree, the distress home market and the regular home market in San Francisco are different markets in different neighborhoods with different buyers.

In fact, buyer demand — as measured by months’ supply of inventory, average days on market, percentage of listings accepting offers and other statistical parameters – has significantly improved since 2011 began, for both distress homes (albeit with declining prices) and for non-distress homes (with generally stable prices, with perhaps the beginning of a slight upward pressure on values).

As can be seen in the two charts below, distress house sales continue to be clustered in Realtor Districts 3 & 10, the band of less affluent neighborhoods that run along the southern border of the city. Together, they make up about 60% of all distress house sales, and their home values have been hugely affected by such sales. Other areas, such as Districts 5, Noe/Castro/Haight, and 7, Pacific Heights/Marina, have had very few distress sales and they have virtually no impact on values there.

Distress condo sales are mostly clustered in the SOMA/ South Beach/ Mission Bay area where the huge new developments went up in the past 10 years, and that is the area where condo values have been impacted most. On a percentage basis, again Districts 3 & 10 have been deeply affected, but in absolute numbers, their condo markets are relatively small.

The City Controller’s Economic Barometer Report for December 2010

Click to view December 2010 Economic Barometer Report from the City Controller.

Tenancy In Common Dispute Resolution

“Over the past 20 years, residential Tenancies In Common (TICs) established themselves as an affordable pathway to home ownership in an otherwise unaffordable San Francisco marketplace. TIC ownership offered a solution to the City’s vexing condominium conversion rules, which allow for easy and affordable conversions, but require a waiting period before conversion can begin. As a short-term bridge to condo ownership, problems inherent in TIC ownership were tolerable, often even invisible and thousands of 2-6 unit buildings were transformed from tenant-occupied investment properties to owner-occupied homestead. However as the waiting time for condo conversion has lengthened from 3-5 years to over 20 years, the challenges of long-term TIC home ownership have become more apparent, heightening the need for a clearer understand of how TIC disputes are resolved.”

Read the rest of the article here:
2011 TIC Disputes Brochure

Farmers Market at UCSF Parnassus Ending…

The market at 505 Parnassus ends this Wednesday, December 8th. It runs from 10am – 3pm!

UCSF Mission Bay Farmers Market Ends Soon

The farmers market at Mission Bay ends on Wednesday, November 24th.

It’s on Gene Friend betewwn 3rd and 4th Streets and runs from 10am to 2pm.

Castro Farmers Market Ending

The farmers market at Noe and Market is ending October 27th. It runs from 4pm – 8pm this Wednesday.

Upper Haight Farmers Market Ending

The market at Waller & Stanyan is ending in October for 2010. It currently runs from 4-8pm on Wednesdays.