How do I find out what houses in my neighborhood are selling for?

Factual Questions
1

This is a question I ought to be easily able to answer, since I’m a periodicals librarian and all, but I’m a bit at a loss. (And shocked and upset.) I just got the reassessment property tax thingy from the county and holy crap do they think my house is worth a hell of a lot more than it is! The thing is, I think they’re comparing it with nearby streets with which it is, let’s say, inappropriate to compare. What’s the best way to see what houses in my area are selling for, and by “my area” I mean “my street”, which is not at all the same thing as even one street over? (I bought my house for $175,000 three and a half years ago. Now in the meantime I did add a garage, but I assure you it wasn’t the kind of garage to make my house suddenly worth $256,000.)

Any other information that would help me dispute a property tax assessment would be Extremely Helpful.

2

MLS?

3

I don’t know how South Carolina handles things, but there should be an office at your county offices that maintains lists of real property parcels, what they’re appraised for, owner’s name and mailing address, and capsule description (undeveloped woodlot, single-family residence, service station ,etc.). Usually these lists are by numbers tied to parcel maps, with sequential numbers identifying contiguous parcels. Check with your county clerk or assessor to find out who to connect with to get this sort of info.

4

You might want to check out zillow.com. You can enter any address and it will give you an estimate of the value of that property based on recent sales and other info. It also lists comparable properties in the area and their value.

5

Most counties have a site where you can look up properties, the current owner, date of last sale, and selling price. You could use that to look up some properties.

But first you need to know the address of properties that have sold recently, that are on your street, and that are a comparable house.

You could also use this site to look up your neighbors’ houses, and see how they are assessed (assuming they are similar sized, etc.).

6
7

This won’t help the OP (unless there is a similar site for other states) but Michigan has http://moveinmichigan.com. It has photos, descriptions and selling prices, based on parameters you describe.

8

Zillow is pretty good but only accurate for prices on homes that have recently sold. Other homes that were sold and bought years ago they are only estimating on and those estimates seem rather high these days.

9

Look to your county web site first. You may very well have a legitimate complaint and be grouped in with the wrong neighborhood for mass appraisal.

What you may need to do is protest your valuation. In Colorado, it’s a common procedure. My Wife works for the ‘bad’ guys. She’s an appraiser for the Assessors office in our county. Sometimes mistakes are made. Contact the Assessors office to do this.

I work for the GIS department for the same county. Our system is a point and click that will give you all the latest sales information on any property. If you would like to give me the county that you live in, I would be happy to poke around on their web site and see what may be available. It can be a little convoluted.

(Valuation in our county went up 30% this year. People are going to flip out. But that’s what the sales records show).

10

You might want to ask for assistance from a Realtor or real estate agent. I am one, and not only do I know what resources are available to the public and how to use them, but I have full access to the MLS (Multiple Listing Service) data online, which the public doesn’t (much data is extracted from MLS for the public, but not all of it).

In my area, you can access County Deed records online and determine the sale price of any property that changed hands within $100. The record keeping of many government data sources is rooted in the 1800’s, so don’t expect it to be complete, WYSIWYG or easy to negotiate. That’s why the services of an expert might come in handy.

Another source would be the local title companies. They do that kind of research for us Realtors free, but they will probably charge the public by the hour.

You can also hire a private appraiser to do a complete appraisal of your property. In my area, that costs about $350. It is an extremely good tool to use if you end up arguing with the tax assessor, but in my experience, not absolutely essential if you do your homework.

I have argued with tax assessors and won sometimes, lost others, with just the data I could collect myself.

11

Zillow might be good for some areas, but in my experience it does a terrible job of reporting and estimating house prices. I used to check it out every once in a while to see which way the market was drifting, until:[ul]
[li]The unlivable, fire-damaged(!) house two doors down was listed as the most expensive house on the block. Even undamaged, it’s the smallest house on the block.[/li][li]Zillow began listing my assuredly single-family home as a two-unit building, with one half priced at twice the other half.[/li][li]Neighborhood home prices dropped by a factor of three over a couple months, then recovered nearly all the value in the next month. The market’s a little volatile, yes, but not that volatile.[/li][li]The house at the end of the block was listed as “recently sold” for $280K. Since anyone paying that price for that particular house was clearly an idiot, I investigated. Turns out $280K was a package price for four houses, and Zillow allocated the price to one house only.[/li][/ul]Since (as I understand it) Zillow bases their prices in part on recent sales, that’s when I chalked them up as worthless.

To the OP: In my county, the Register of Deeds keeps an online database of deeds, including mortgage liens. I can type in anyone (by name) and get a list of mortgages and their amounts. This takes a little interpretation, for your purposes, because it would be the mortgage amount, and not the selling price, that appears.

Or, as has been suggested, befried a real estate agent and ask for some comps.

12

Some local newspapers run recent home sales in their real estate section. That only helps if there has been a house sold on your street recently, though.

13

As zut illustrates, some data may be misleading. You need an expert to avoid the pitfalls of raw data.

In my area, I can tell you the story behind almost every real estate transaction in a 4 mile radius. Without the stories, you will be ignorant about how valid individual prices are, and taking an average might not work, either. Was that a distress sale which lowered the price? Was that part of a bidding war, which raised the price? How about a multiple-property transaction, which may distort the price either way? Only an expert knows for sure, and I don’t think Zillow qualifies.

14

If you’re in Richland County go to its Online Services: http://www.richlandonline.com/Services/onlineservices.asp
There are property value, register of deeds and comparative property sites there.

15

The thing about looking at county assessment values is that we all just got reassessed. And no houses have sold on my street for quite a while. I do know what the houses for sale are on the market, for, at least. To object you write them a letter and they come and reassess and if you still don’t agree you go to a hearing - I sent the letter off Friday, just using the examples of the current listings. (Both have been on the market for almost a year.) I’m sure they’re assessing me as if all the parts of my historic district are the same, which they most certainly are not. Three streets in people can, say, build an arbor with their own two hands and not have it stolen for the copper.

16

The thing about Zillow is that even though it’s estimates are a bit naive it’s stiill the easiest interface I’ve seen to find homes sold recently in the area of any given house. If that’s really all the OP wants, I’d still recommend it.

17

With regards to the values given by assessment tax records, it may work differently in other places, but here’s how it works in my county.

Each town, village or city (=municipality, think sub-county) is treated separately. Sometime in the past, the municipality is completely assessed and a dollar value is placed on each property. This is intended to represent the theoretical sale price at the time; it either reflects the actual sale, if recent, or a professional estimate of what that might be based on all available factors.

That number is the assessed value, and it never changes from one assessment to the next.

Since assessments are expensive, and the cost is bourne by the municipality, even tho it would be ideal to re-assess every year, that would be cost prohibitive, so reassessments are done only when forced by state law.

Every year, all of the actual property sales in the municipality are summed, and we now have two numbers; the total value of the sale prices and the total value of the assessment values for those same properties. Dividing one by the other gives a ratio of increase or decrease in values. This ratio is applied to all other, non-sold properties in the same municipality to give a “Fair Market Value” (FMV). So you see this figure will change for each property every year while the assessment value will not. The theory is that if property X sold for 127% of assessed value, property Y is now worth 127% more, too.

The total FMVs for one municipality divided by the total assessments gives us an assessment ratio; just after a new assessment, this ratio is 100%, but as time goes on, that number will change. When it gets too big or too small for too long a time (I don’t remember the state requirements in detail), the state forces a complete reassessment.

Now that you know how the two tax numbers (assessment and FMV) are created and what they mean, maybe it will help you interpret them. As Realtors, we take them as a guide but not gospel. And of course, YMMV – other counties may do it differently.

18

Good luck. It sounds like you may have a legitimate case.

As I said, my Wife is an appraiser for the county. She is at work now. Sunday. She left this morning at 5am. Just like yesterday. So much for weekends.

She’s not there because she wants to stick it to the tax payer. She’s at work because she has to get it right.

Reappraising all properties is a HUGE undertaking and mistakes are can be made.

19

That seems to be a common mistake with assessors, especially if they are not local people or companies.

In my area, we have waterfront and inland as two main classes. Waterfront is worth 10-15 times what inland is per acre. So the assessor takes one inland vacant land property and multiplies the area by the average value for all inland properties. Sounds fair, right?

But an inland property across the road from a lake access is worth twice what an inland property 5 miles away from the lake is, and I have numerous sales figures to back that up. So assessments for inland, but near-lake properties are typically much too low, but most property owners won’t contest that! Conversely, farther inland properties are assessed too high, but since the ratio of far-inland to near-lake inland is maybe 50:1 (WAG), the distortion is not as great and contesting it may not be very rewarding.

20

In addition to Zillow, I also use realtor.com to help determine property values of homes throughout the county. After entering the property address, you can filter the results by property type, gross living area, bed/bath count, age, lot size and price to view all active listings on a map within a specified radius. Another good website, trulia.com, provides both sold comparables and active listings.