Open Records Request, Dekalb County, Fulton County, GA

A law passed last year in GA that says the assessor’s offices must provide the taxpayer or his or her representative with the case or comparables that they intend to use at the board of equalization hearing. The DeKalb County Assessors have begun using the Tyler Appraisal system to justify their values. Fulton County as well as Cobb County use this system too. The only difference is that Fulton County shows what the sales prices per square foot are as well as what the appraised prices per foot are.  Cobb County doesn’t show the dollars per square foot. Basically, DeKalb tells the board of equalization members that they entered in the parameters and the computer says the value is X amount and we recommend a “no change” in the value. In my recent experience, I’ve gotten their cases ahead of time and normally they don’t have very good comprables selected at all. On one set, I found that the five sales the county had selected to use against me were 20% to 35% smaller than my property. Whenever there is less heated square footage divided in to the sale price, the price per foot tends to be much higher per foot and then if the comprables are too big, then the opposite happens….the sales prices per foot will be lower. You want to use sales that are approximately the same size as the subject property. Say 10% or less. Since I had the case ahead of time, I was able to find five sales that were more in line with the subject property and in doing so, I won the hearing. On another case, the county had five sales on their sheet and once I figured up the sales prices per foot, all five had actually sold for less per foot than what we were valued at, so I was able to turn that against the county in my favor. All of these counties are broke and they are not looking to give up any tax money, so it’s imperative that you know the rules and use them to your advantage. If anyone wants an analysis of their property tax situation, please contact me, Rob Vinson, at 404-218-7874 or http://www.taxappealatlanta.com and I’ll let you know if I can help you or not. I have 21 years experience doing real tax appeals and I enjoy what I do! I’ve helped my clients save millions of valuable tax dollars through the years that would have needlessly been paid had I not been looking out for them.

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