On 4/25/2015 5:08 PM, philo wrote:

Amazingly my taxes actually have gone down after they had been
unrealistically raised. It happened well before Walker came into office
though.

During the Bush housing bust, those that experienced a drastic reduction
in home value over what they paid, did get property tax reductions if
they applied for a re-assessment. I know my sister-in-law who purchased
a duplex which fell in value by $200K got a reduction. But now the
"value" is up by about $600K so it is reassessed again and the 2%
increase limit (California prop 13) applies from the original assessed
value, not from the reduced assessed value.

The property tax rate in California is actually pretty low in percentage
terms, but the property values are so ridiculously high that the dollar
amounts are very high. A 1786 sq ft, 3/2, 1960's, tract home, that was
about $20K new, sold on my street in 2013 for $1.395 million and will
have property taxes of over $17,500 per year. It needed about $100K in
renovation before the owners could move in and that was better than the
sellers renovating it and raising the price because at least the
renovations did not trigger a reassessment. Today it would sell for
about $1.75 million.