 |
 |
|
||||
|
||||||
|
|
Featured Listener Comments Section: Contents List |
 |
|
|
|||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Listener: Dick H.
Category: Lubbock City Politics
Date: 18 Apr 2008
Time: 14:57:34 -0700
Remote Name: 67.135.7.61
The Lubbock Central Appraisal District has just robbed Lubbock taxpayers of somewhere between $3 million and $5 million dollars. They raised appraisals in Lubbock by an average of 5% when records of the Lubbock Realtor's Association show that sales of homes reflect a 2.6% increase in the value of properties in Lubbock.
Many people like myself received a 10% increase in the value of their homes which is the maximum increase allowed by law.
The Chief appraiser said that the average selling price of houses was $127,981 up from $124,718 but "the increases in estimated average appraisal prices are incongruent because lower-end houses do not sell." This is a stupid excuse for raising taxes nearly double the rate they should be.
If lower end houses were selling it would seem to me that they would command less of a markup on their prices than the 2.6% increase on sales prices of higher priced homes and as a result would cause the increase in property values to be less than the 2.6% increase reported by the realtors. He also mentioned that certain areas such as Lubbock-Cooper, New Deal and Ransom Canyon were hot areas where prices were higher than other parts of Lubbock County.
It is strange to me that my appraisal went up 16% but was limited to 10% by law. I live in a house that is only 57% in value of the average sales price of the $127,981 houses sold in Lubbock. I would think that this would put my home the lower range of values for homes which according to the Chief appraiser are not selling. Does the fact that homes are not selling usually lower the value of the homes in the neighborhood? They also made the excuse that houses were undervalued last year. If that is the case then the LCAD was not doing their job and should all be fired because it is their duty to fairly evaluate property values each and every year and not just once every few years.
I also do not live in one of the hot property areas mentioned above. I examined several sales of houses in my neighborhood and found that they sold well below the appraised tax values. My home is not anything out of the ordinary or different from any other home in the neighborhood except some have a little more square footage than my home and a few have slightly less.
The bottom line is that the LCAD which is governed by hand picked boards appointed by the city and school district is giving these entities an unwarranted tax increase above what would be normal and fair to the taxpayers.
Virtually everyone in Lubbock is in this same position and I encourage all taxpayers to sent in their protest forms and demand a hearing to get their taxes reduced. If we do not demand the city and schools to live within the same spending limits that taxpayers have to live with then we will eventually be taxed to the poor house.
Dick
|
|
|
