There is a rather lengthy story about the house we moved into in 2009. There are parts of the story here, another bit of the tale here, and even more details here. The long of the short, though, is that we stumbled our way into a heck of a lot more house than we could afford without exceeding our budget. It has been a long, hard road to make the place liveable, but the mission is mostly accomplished as long as you don't look too closely at the cobwebs lurking in the dark corners.
Right out in the open, however, has been one major issue.
The county's opinion on the value of the house.
Way back when we were in the process of buying the place, there was a lawsuit between the school district and county regarding the value of many houses in our neighborhood. The school district ended up winning, which meant that the taxes we expected to pay when we went under contract were a lot lower that what we ended up paying once we closed. Of course, we had an appraisal when we bought the house, so when the time was right, I took that appraisal to the county and appealed our property assessment.
It took all of two seconds to win that. I had an appraisal with one dollar amount while the county had us assessed at a much higher dollar amount. Appraisals win in that case. Our property taxes went down a whopping $4000 per year.
Yeah, $4000 per year. It was definitely a fight worth waging.
But all good things must come to an end, apparently, because ONCE AGAIN our school district filed suit claiming that are appeal amount was too low. ONCE AGAIN we had to dig up paperwork and show up at the courthouse to argue over the worth of our home. It's a really funny thing to argue about considering you can't really put a price on the place where you've marked the growth of your daughter along a corner of a closet.
Anyway, I showed up at the courthouse to argue that our house was worth a lot less than the school district was claiming. The second I walked through the door, I nearly passed out laughing.
The school district's lawyer. He might be old enough to drive, but I kinda wanted to card him to be sure. I have shoes that are older than him. I COULD BE HIS MOTHER IS WHAT I'M SAYING.
He probably looks younger than he really is, but still. SO. VERY. YOUNG.
Regardless, he's a lawyer who gets paid to make money for our school district, a fact which makes my brain hurt, and I was there to try to keep as much of our money as possible. That means I left my mercy at the door.
You guys, I almost feel bad about how I rolled over that little kid.
He started what was an informal discussion (the goal is to reach an agreement with just a mediator present) with what he thought was an unwavering pile of proof that our appraisal should be $80,000 higher than what it is. Which, that's cute. $80,000. That turns into a hell of a lot of property taxes, so NO THANK YOU. He had comp after comp and was proudly trumping how similar the houses look to ours.
That cookie cutter house thing is deceiving, though.
The mediator let him go on and on with his comps, but then turned to me and said, "I bet there is a reason you didn't pay as much as some of your neighbors."
"As a matter of fact, there is," I replied as I handed over an appraisal that clearly stated our house is worth way less than the lawyer was contending.
We'll just leave some details about that appraisal out, but the end game is that someone smart said our home is worth a lot less than other people in our neighborhood have paid. A LOT LESS. For reasons.
But then it got better.
The lawyer, of course, hadn't seen the appraisal before, nor had he bothered to pay for one of his own. He thought he had a slam dunk, so it hadn't been on his radar. As I passed him a copy of the appraisal I had, he started to look a bit pale. He was, however, seemingly certain that he could poke holes in the appraisal real quick like. He paged through it and tried to show how that four-year old appraisal couldn't possibly be valid.
He picked the wrong page to use in his argument.
For some reason, he turned to the page of the appraisal that had an itemized list of things that had to be fixed before we could move in. We were using a VA loan, so it's a non-negotiable thing to fix what the appraiser and inspector say you have to fix. The lawyer said something about how we had surely made many repairs that increased the value and then started to read the list.
Install light switch covers.
Patch hole in dining room wall.
Secure front stairs.
Install kitchen faucet.
That's all the further he got, because I had already started laughing. I told the tale of how we spent about a $1000 to fix those front stairs for real, but otherwise? There was no way our repairs had increased the value of the house by $80,000. If new light switch covers could increase property value like that, I could be a millionaire in just a few short hours.
That was when the lawyer gave up. He threw a new number into the discussion, I cut his number by a few thousand dollars, and then it was over. Papers were signed and while our assessment went up, it wasn't by a ton.
I kind of felt like I had stolen boy wonder's joy. WHOOPS.
Now if only I could steal the school district's joy and get them to use their money to do more important things than sue over the value of homes.