With home prices retreating, you’d think property taxes would too. But don’t count on it - by the time you see lower taxable values, your local government may be in enough of a squeeze to raise the rates that apply to those taxable values.

While you may not be able to control local tax policy, you can at least do something to see if your property-tax assessment is realistic. According to Pete Sepp, an official at the National Taxpayers Union, as many as 60% of homes are overassessed.
From the April issue of Kiplinger’s magazine, here are three ideas for making sure you’re not overpaying - and for making your case if you are:

1.Look for errors. Find out how your district levies taxes - on 100% of the market value or some fraction of it - by calling the assessor’s office. Fractional assessments are less common than they used to be, but plenty of localities still use them. Especially at 70% or 80% of value, owners may not realize their assessments are out of line. Go to the assessor’s office or Web site to see the property card that lists the details of your home. Check each item for mistakes, from the number of bathrooms to the square footage. Valuing properties is an inexact science; in addition, when paper records were transferred to computers, many errors were made or retained. If there’s a mechanical error, the assessor may fix your assessment on the spot.

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Originally published at For Sale By Owner (FSBO) Blog at Fizber.com. Please leave any comments there.

Tags: fsbo

This spring, as it becomes a popular time for homeowners to begin preparing their homes for sale, we encourage you to do some essential steps to make sure the most important first step takes place: buyers make the decision to view the home.

Here five essential tips that can help local residents stay on the right track when preparing their homes for a sale.

1. Curb Appeal - the better the curb appeal of your home is, the more attractive it is to prospective buyers.

- Trim overgrown bushes, weed beds and add a fresh layer of mulch
- Clean your front door and repaint if needed
- Add a fresh doormat
- Keep grass cut, edged and blown
- Plant some color in the beds to add contrast

2. Cleaning - for most buyers, dirt equals stress and the last thing most buyers want is more stress in their lives.

- Pressure-wash the driveway and sidewalks.
- Clean windows inside and out
- Pressure wash decks and patios

3. Paint - the condition and color of the paint can make a huge difference in how buyers react to your home. Select light neutrals - creamy kakis, pearly grays or soft greens.

4. Replace Worn Carpet - Dirty carpet is unsanitary and nobody will be able to overlook your worn carpet. Replace the top layer with inexpensive neutral colored carpet and you will always recoup the investment.

5. Stage your home - Buyers who look at vacant homes only see floors, walls and ceilings. With nothing else to look at, they focus on flaws. Because of this, vacant houses are very vulnerable to low-ball offers and often sell for 15-20 percent below list price.

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Originally published at For Sale By Owner (FSBO) Blog at Fizber.com. Please leave any comments there.

Tags: fsbo

Google Maps is global, so why not Google StreetView as well? A London expansion is suggested by this image of one of the vehicles that takes the 360 degree street images. (Google has done some of the photography itself, but also uses partner Immersive Media in the U.S.). StreetView image collection is apparently underway in Canada, although there are some legal issues surrounding privacy and consent to be photographed that make it somewhat more complicated than in the U.S.

If or when StreetView expands globally, or at least to Western Europe, it becomes a travel tool for U.S. residents (or for Europeans coming to the U.S. who want to take advantage of the weakening dollar). In the travel context, there are already Trivop and TVtrip, which offer video tours of hotel interiors and surrounding exteriors in Europe.

Before StreetView, the first company to do something similar was France’s directory publisher Pages Jaunes (Yellow Pages). Of course, Pages Jaunes did it the old fashioned way, with humans taking the pictures of building exteriors and storefronts instead of machines. In the U.S., Amazon preceded StreetView with A9 “Block View,” but it shut down the effort (perhaps prematurely). The company, I’m told, still owns patents in the area.

Postscript: Fizber officially confirmed that it is going to the UK and Europe (and elsewhere eventually around the globe). Coverage right now is focused on “major metropolitan areas.”

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Originally published at For Sale By Owner (FSBO) Blog at Fizber.com. Please leave any comments there.

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