DAVID SLADE: Owners on notice
Dreamstime
If you own property in Charleston County, you should have received a letter two weeks ago telling you what the county thinks your property is worth for tax purposes.
You might be wondering: What does this "assessment" notice mean? Is this a good thing or a bad thing? And what should I do about it?
Here's the deal: Property taxation and reassessment are complicated issues, much more than they need to be, but you can deal with your assessment notice by asking yourself just a few questions.
The No. 1 question is whether you believe your property is worth more, less or about the same as the "total taxable value" listed on your assessment notice. Due to state limits on assessment increases, there's a good chance the total taxable value is less than the true market value of the property.
As you review your assessment notice, don't worry if the new assessment is higher than the previous one. The new one may be higher because it's supposed to reflect how the property's value changed from the end of 2003 to the end of 2008, but that doesn't mean your taxes will rise.
Again, the key is whether your property is worth what the county says it's worth.
If your property is worth at least as much as the total taxable value assigned by the county, then don't worry about the assessment, skip the rest of this column, and go enjoy your day.
But keep reading if you think you've been overassessed.
Appeal?
If you're confident the county's number is too high and your property is worth less, then you'll want to do some investigating and consider filing an appeal.
About 800 property owners had filed objections as of Wednesday, and most have until Sept. 28 to do so (the deadline is 90 days from the mailing of the assessment notice, and some of those were delayed).
The property value assigned by the county is going to help determine your property tax bills for about the next five years, and you don't want to pay more than you should. Counties are required to conduct reassessments to keep up with changing property values, but it's a big job assessing nearly 170,000 properties, and mistakes can happen.
If you're going to appeal your assessment, you'll need to show the county why it is wrong. You might spot a mistake that's easy to prove, such as an error involving the size of your home or property.
More likely, you might just think the county overestimated the value of your property. In that case, you'll want to provide "comparables," similar properties with lower values.
The process
The appeal process starts rather informally. You file a written objection using the form provided with your assessment notice. The county assessor's office then should contact you to schedule a meeting where you may reach an agreement with a county appraiser. You don't have to prepare supporting documents at this point, but you'll need more than just your opinion that the assessment is too high.
Miss your conference date, and you'll miss your right to appeal for this year.
If you don't reach an agreement about your property value through a conference, then you move to the next step. You can file a written protest within 30 days of the conference, ideally using the form provided by the county at the time. At this point, you would be asked to provide reasoning and supporting information for your protest.
If the assessor's office rejects your protest, step three is a written appeal to the Charleston County Board of Assessment Appeals, whose members are appointed by County Council.
If you get no satisfaction with an objection, a protest and an appeal, your remaining option is to go to court. This step likely involves hiring professionals, and it's usually commercial property owners and owners of very high-value residential property who go this far.
Here's how you can use the Charleston County's online information to research property values and assessments:
Visit http://ccgisweb.charlestoncounty.org, click "start" and use the county's site to look up properties by owner name, address or parcel number.
The site includes updated market values, aerial photographs, sale prices, square footage and more. Look up any property, then you can click on neighboring properties to see their information (click the "i" at the top of the web page, then click the property you want information about).
At http://prcweb.charlestoncounty.org, you can look up the sale history of any property and search property sales, by date, for entire subdivisions. On the main page, look near the bottom where it says "click here to search by sale date." That will take you to a page where you can look up every property sale in a subdivision during a range of time you select. You can also look up property tax bills, which include assessment information, at http://taxweb.charlestoncounty.org.
Charleston County has put together a website to explain reassessment and the appeals process in more detail than space allows here. Go to www.charlestoncounty.org and click the "2011 reassessment" link.
