It PAYS To Ask!

When we received our tax assessment for the year we did not agree with what they valued our home at and decided to pursue an appeal with the assessor's board of review. We weren't all that optimistic since we knew from the news that they would not be considering any foreclosures in the comparable sales to help determine the property value, but it wasn't all that time consuming to write the appeal and gather the information.

Much to our surprise, we got the determination back yesterday and they lowered the taxable value of our home by $8500 and the overall value of our home by $17,000. Not as much as it could have been, but we were pleased none the less.

This morning I called our lender and let them know that our taxes will be adjusted based on this new assessment and asked if they would recalculate for our escrow account. They had me fax the letter over and we should have a new number for our June 1 housepayment. Our housepayment had gone up $200 based on the assessment earlier this year, this should help nudge that down a tiny bit.

All the money we get "back" from this can be rolled into our snowball again as our snowball went away with the increase in house payment.