Belt Auction

Any real estate ppl or agents know if a county tax offices "market value" of a home in its county is reliable?

There is a house that I am looking at and on the tax office website there is the information like how much is due for taxes and by when, well im looking at one whose "market value" in this website is 298k? is this appraisal more accurate than zillow.com or realquest.com? also it has a "capped value" on it too of 286k what does that mean? is that the lowest it can be appraised at or something? any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks

Public Comments

1. County tax office or Zillow neither one is reliable. They come up with a value by use of a computer program and the data that is used is from some builders permit or whatever that may not be correct. They use the same questionable data on the comparable sales they use. They never walk inside the house- so they don't adjust for quality or condition or view or exact location. They may be way to high or way to low. The capped value usually means that the state government has a law that prevents the property value from being raised (at least for a while). This may be because the owner is elderly or because a homestead may not have its value raised at all or not above a certain percent per year. To determine the real value of a property you need to #1 get a purchase appriasal. or #2 get help from a good real estate agent that works a lot in that area. Or #3 you need to walk thru a large number of similar homes in that area and study recent sales and educate yourself on the local values. Never depend on the "online" valuation services except for fun.
2. NONE of the sources you mention are reliable, when attempting to discover current market value. County tax rolls may or may not reflect such a value. Zillow and Realquest are even worse. If you want current value, ask a real estate agent for written evidence of recent and comparable sales in the immediate area.
3. I look at these sources on a daily basis and can tell you that they should be use as a starting point and you should not assume they are the end all be all. As a matter of fact Zillow uses the tax office values as a source in their price approximations. The county tax values are based on last years determinations and considering the significant changes the real estate market has undergone these past 18 months, depending on your area, those tax values could be way off. The county also keeps them high unless they are disputed to adjust for decreasing property values. At least where I am rarely will they move them down unless the property owner disputes them. What you also want to do in addition to using Zillow and the tax records is to have a real estate agent look up recent sales for similar properties nearby and see what they have sold for. You can also consult this with an appraiser and they might give you an idea of what the value of the property might be without doing a full appraisal. In other words, use several resources to determine a property value, not just one.
4. What you are looking at on the county website as "market" value, is really "tax" value. Only an appraiser can provide true "market value".
5. Tax records are never a true indicator of Market Value. The number quoted is solely for property tax bills. Only an appraisal can give you a true price.