Continued Long Delays at the Assessor’s Office Means Longer Time Until Property Tax Reassessments

Jonathan, Raffi and I are about strategic purchases and utilizing the cash you have without breaking the bank. We’ll suggest folks getting homes that aren’t their ‘forever’ home should consider getting an ARM (adjustable rate mortgage) so you don’t end up paying for the benefit of having a locked interest rate for years you won’t be owning a given property or if you’re going to remodel it, which can save hundreds of dollars a month in mortgage payments. Another fringe benefit that’s only temporary in nature is the fact that the City may take a long time to get to reassessing your property taxes. Assessor Carmen Chu spoke at the Residential Builder’s Association meeting recently and said that her department is still using green-screened, COBOL-operated computers to keep track of the nearly $2 billion property tax base. COBOL is old school and such features as “copy” or “paste” weren’t even heard of when they first created the language in 1959! Right now there are 2,500 change-in-ownership reassessments outstanding; 2,000 appeals and 12,000 new condo units that need their initial assessments.