We received our city property tax appraisals in the mail this week.
Our home in Kaaawa, which sits on just over 20,000 square feet of land, now has an assessed value of $686,100. That’s down 4% from a year ago, and a drop of over 30% its highest assessed value back in 2007.
The house next door has been teetering for years on the edge of foreclosure, and there are at least four other houses in the immediate area which have already been taken back by lenders and which are now sitting empty despite efforts to move them a much lower prices.
And we’re in what is probably considered the more desirable part of Kaaawa since we’re up the hill and out of the flood and tsunami zone. The view is an extra bonus.
The property tax collected by the city in 2011 was also about 30% less than we paid in 2007. No wonder the city is adding or boosting fees wherever they can.
I’ll be interested to see what assessed values are like in other neighborhoods.
Discover more from i L i n d
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Mine went down in Palolo for the first time in years:-707k down to 684k for a 65 y/o 2ooo sq ft house on 6700 sq ft lot.
I went through the property tax appeal process a few years ago. The appeals board voted against me. When I asked to see the vote I was told they did not keep minutes! What a mockery of the process, they seemed surprised anyone would question them.
I recently found out the selection committee for CDBG & HOME grants also does not keep minutes. This is wrong, in my opinion, and I have asked that future meetings include minutes.
The city council is currently in the process of approving new members for the appeals board. I would recommend you submit testimony regarding this issue so others are aware of it.
For a national-level view, today’s Washington Post has an interesting article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/falling-home-values-mean-budget-crunches-for-cities/2011/12/14/gIQAwWmtHP_story.html
Clearly a longer term problem than many imagine.
My brother lives in Newport Beach, CA; his townhouse, located 2+ blocks from the ocean, is assessed at just over $750 k. His last property tax bill was slightly over $16,000 plus he was assessed a $3,000 public school fee as well.
Here on O`ahu – and without any exemptions -the property tax assessed on a similar piece of residential property would be around $2,500.
Lucky we live in Hawai`i.
It torks me off when O`ahu property owners bortch, pass and moan about their property taxes. As renters, we don’t get any choice except to pay the landlord’s tax which does not include any reductions.
Yes, their property taxes are higher but our over-all cost of living is higher! Oahu is getting squeezed already.
Some people, e.g., Mufi Hannemann, simply don’t understand or won’t recognize the economic principle that the landlord’s costs will be passed on to renters.
I encourage you to contact your councilmember and express your concerns about homeowners’ exemptions.
in the end we have to pay for city govt one way or another, so it might be like squeezing a water balloon, but i’ve always felt that the city’s “assessment” process is just ripe for some serious sunshine. based on my past experience and two professional home appraisals in the past 8 years, i think their system is quick to jack it up and very slow to drop it back down. we have to expect limited accuracy based on the shot gun nature of the assessment approach, but any time a property is recorded and the “assessed” value is different, it is obvious the system doesn’t work. there is no more honest valuation than a sales price. in fact, a home’s sale price SHOULD be what shows up as the valuation that tax year. but it doesn’t. shouldn’t an assessment list the comps they used? why don’t they? Might be worth a FOIA to see the formulas they use to compute this information. I say FOIA b/c i have a feeling no one at the tax dept really wants to talk about it. That or a class action for people that get denied an appeal when they tell you to make sure the door doesn’t hit you on the way out…
Usually city assessments lag actual market activity. It sounds like the market is about to clear in Kaawa with the empty houses and the foreclosures. Very, very sad, in general. But for someone like Ian – it’s tricky. If we give his neighbors a break on principal value, then shouldn’t Ian get it to? He played by the rules. He paid his mortgage. His payments should come down too, no? Very sticky situation with lots of questions about fairness.
If you know its address on O’ahu you can find out a property’s assessed valuation, and how much the tax bill is for this year and for previous years, and other interesting info. Here’s the webpage:
http://www.honolulupropertytax.com/Search/GenericSearch.aspx?mode=ADDRESS
My very humble 2-bedroom fee simple condo in Kane’ohe, 730 sq. ft. (plus proportionate share of parking lot, elevator, lobby, etc) is assessed for 2012 at $249,200, a drop from the 2011 valuation of $261,700. The highest valuation a few years ago was about $285,000. My tax bill last year was $496 (full year). However, the most recent sale of an apartment in my building, with the same size and configuration as mine, was $198,000. So will my future assessment and tax bill go down? Ask me 2-3 years from now!
The answer to all these economic woes is to give stimulus bail-outs to banks who imposed more stringent conditions on consumers.
Here in Hawaii, the answer is squeeze on homeowners with increasing fees of anything imaginable and . . . allow developers to build more subdivisions for ” badly needed housing “.
Ian,
I may be a bit jealous. My house in Kaaawa, on Kam Hwy, just had an increase of 12% over last year!
I am not sure how the C&C are valuing properties, but I did have a refi this year ( on another (Waikiki) property) & the assessment is coming in at approx 20% over the appraisal. I will be filing an appeal.
Well Ian, what you see is the “Keep the country, COUNTRY” folks getting their wish. However, shed no tears for the City, they are getting their bite out of us folks closer to town. My assessment went up again this year even though the footprint of my very modest Manoa house has not changed substantially since it was built in 1947.
I can see why. All over the valley the stately old Manoa houses with the large front lawns are being torn down, the lot subdivided and minimum setback McMansions being built. Likewise, the modest ’50s era houses are being torn down with similar result. I see similar things taking place in Kahala, Portlock and Hawaii Kai. It is probably happening elsewhere as well.
I do feel for those folks in your area who may be losing their homes, but have no fear, the tax base is no danger at all.
Raleigh Ferdun – “Keep the Country Country” folks are doing you a big favor.
Consider the following:
1.You and I will pay the infrastructural costs from roads to schools to emergency services, not the developers.
2. Tourism will be negatively affected because tourists love the country side of Oahu.
3. More competition from outside rich folks (who can afford to buy) means more stress on the locals for housing, rentals, traffic congestion, and higher property taxes etc etc
Who ends up paying for all these impacts?
I am so realistic in the present world – Austalia is a day ahead of Honolulu – that I can hardly believe how realistic people, if given a chance, can be! Look at these real estate values in Hawaii! Critically minded cohorts, studied in the great mix of Real Property versus Non-Real-Property values, honest souls – when they find that unless they apply ripping good imaginational resources on the subjet of value they are numbskulls compared to Woody Allen or Christopher Hitchens or such.
Have you seen “The Descendents” with George Clooney? There are people like that on Kauai, and more beleageredly on Oahu amidst all the pajamas and silliness – there is so much alternately to life when real minds realistically apply themselves! Come on guys, see the whole picture, its gobal.
Scarlett Johannsen is in a spot-on movie about a zoo faced with foreclosure, in a similar situation to the Oahu situation, even Kipu Kai, but with a different assessmet of value, and one might go see “The Descendents” (and you will) – what could be more to the point?
There is volcanic unrelenting competition for land in Hawaii, it is all lost in translation. I surely ain’t paying these prices, good grief! – I’m sleeping in a strange but lovely cave, 30 feet above the wild raging Tasman Sea out makai of Sydney, a massivly populated city in Australia, a sea raging today with the almost cylonic winds and monstrous waves of a Boxing Day surge of super high surf, a weather system of pounding Mel Gibson-sized storm surf that brought fist-sized hailstones to Melboune before it hit New South Wales.
The Tasman Sea is – Country!
Lucky the City and County of Honolulu cannot seize your properties and push you out!
Ian with a home valued that high you are a one percenter! Welcome to the club! Hope the occupyers don’t move to Kaawa! LOL.
The city reported that overall, assessments just went up http://www1.honolulu.gov/csd/publiccom/honnews11/propertyassessmentsreleased121511.htm. I would certainly like to know more about how the assessments are completed.