Friday, December 17, 2010

Property Tax Appeals Soaring

As U.S. home prices continue to fall, property owners in most major U.S. cities are demanding lower taxes, Bloomberg reported Dec. 8. Bloomberg reported specifically on states such as Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, California and Illinois.

Real estate values plunged 30 percent below their peak of April 2006, according to the third quarter S&P/Case-Shiller index of property values in 20 cities, released Nov. 30. Values may drop 10 percent more, Greg Lippmann, a founder of LibreMax Capital LLC, said Dec. 2 at the Hedge Funds New York Conference hosted by Bloomberg Link.

In the Midwest, Illinois may have 19,350 property appeals in 2010, 10 percent more than in 2009, Louis Apostol, executive director of the state’s Property Tax Appeal Board, told Bloomberg. The backlog amounts to about 35,000 claims, of which more than 80 percent come from homeowners and the board approves an average of 30 percent of them, he said.