Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2013 12:05:18 -0400
From: Marian Norton
Subject: Chatham tax values on vehicles and real property
Cryptic, You hit the nail on the head.
Chatham County should not use Ideal values in valuing either our cars or real property. It should be evaluated properly to begin with.
It seems a waste of taxpayer dollars to hire more people to spend more time correcting values when residents complain. I shouldn’t have to waste time every year telling them I drive a wore out car. I recently got values on 2 unregistered vehicles at my home that were totally out of line because the county uses no value other than clean retail even for cars no longer on the road.
The tax department quickly changed the values (slightly) when I sent them an e-mail.
With the new tax collection being done by the state they should begin to have access to all mileage and accident records associated with a VIN # and take those into consideration.
Taxpayers would be happier taxpayers if the numbers they looked at were more reasonable.
Homes are valued in much the same way. Many sales of real property are withheld from their averaging to keep property prices high. This unfairly leaves owners of some housing paying an unfair portion of taxes. If you really have a high end home your values are probably OK.
I have an Idea… How about if I don’t like the value placed on my property, the county writes me a check for it and I sell it to them for that price. (“price estimated in terms of money at which the property would change
hands between a willing and financially able buyer and a willing
seller.”)