Something for all property owners to be aware of.

[Guest guest]

Right now in Alabama, their is a push to try to drive up property values in a round about and crooked way. What they are doing is a "study" between the state and federal government looking at the ratio of sale prices on houses and land between sale "market" value and the assessed price. They are also looking at sales between family members (which might be less), business associates, etc.

What they are really doing is using statistics to cook the values. You see, they look at small property sales, like a few acres and compare that to larger acreage sales. They will then note that small acreage sales tend to go for a little more per acres because the people that buy small plots are usually willing to pay a bit more. This value is then applied to larger tracts and when they see a difference in per acre price, they will try to run up property values based on this false ratio.

In addition, they are trying to upgrade the property usage classification of land to a higher value and thus it would be taxed more heavily. This year they have sent out the notices for appeal of the reclassification with a 30-day notice but ALSO a notice that the last day to file is July 31. Since we've been getting these things mid July, see the problem?

Rotten blood suckers. Its bad enough the drought is kicking the agriculture sector in the teeth and they want still more money. Well, they might find out before long they can't squeeze blood from a stone when it all starts drying up.