That’s how much value my home lost from 2010 to 2011 due to the revaluation.
Revaluation notices have been arriving in the last few weeks, and I thought I’d share details of my own, which is worse than the average anticipated decline of our around 10 percent across the city. Here are the messy details …
- In 2010, my four bedroom, 1.5-bath home at 1713 Cedar St. was assessed at $192,000, just shy of the $192,500 we paid for the house in November of 2006.
- In 2011, that had fallen $32,000 to $160,000, or 16.7 percent.
Is this disappointing? Yes, especially because this puts our refinancing plans in some jeopardy. Is it surprising? No.
I think we all know property values have fallen in recent years, and even a 16.7 percent decline over four years is honestly not that bad compared to some other areas across the country (even the state). We never had a bubble in South Milwaukee, so it never burst. But we also weren’t immune to the realities of the recession.
So I don’t plan to fight the revaluation, but details on how to do so can be found in my previous post on this topic and in this Q&A document prepared by the city.
Among the other key points to keep in mind:
- The new values take effect with your 2011 tax bill, which will be issued this December.
- Unless your property lost more value than the average for the city, your taxes will not go down due to the revaluation. The tax rate per $1,000 of value will go up because less value exists to share the tax burden.
South Milwaukee Blog 
So does that mean that if my house went down more than the 10% expected average my taxes will go down?
Probably. But it’s not guaranteed by any means because it depends on the individual situation. And keep in mind that we are talking only the city portion of your tax bill here — not schools, county, MATC, etc.
And why must the tax rate per thousand go up to share the tax burden? Seriously, I’m not getting it. I also thought Walker is freezing property taxes for 2 years, which would mean the schools, county and MATC cannot raise our taxes. Am I wrong on this? Also it would be interesting to know what is the percentage of people in the country that have upside down mortgages. I can’t find that anywhere. I don’t think your alone on that Erik, which to me is even scarier than the devaluation of your home.
Melanie: The city needs to raise the necessary revenues to fund our budget, so when the value of taxable property goes down, as it obviously has here, the tax rate must go up to make up the difference. In theory, this keeps our property tax revenue even from year to year. That said, we now can not increase the size of our tax levy because of the property tax freeze (unfairly) hoisted upon us by the state. This creates its own set of problem when it comes to maintaining our first-class city services — problems that will become clearer as we craft our 2012 budget in coming months. And, yes, the idea of being at the water line with your mortgage is a somewhat scary thought, as years of equity have just washed away for us.
I don’t think it’s unfair to impose the freeze Erik. Middle class families, like ours, have lost wages while the price of water, gasoline, utilities, food and on and on have gone up. And why can the city not lower its budget? Is there no where to cut? Are we locked into union contracts that didn’t use the “tools” (I know you love that word!) Walker gave us?
I hear you, Melanie, but that’s part of the problem for the city, too. We’ve lost and continue to lose revenues (from the state and otherwise) while also seeing our costs increase. At the same time, we are being hamstrung by Madison legislators who won’t let us raise any new property tax revenue at all. So we look for places to cut … which, given how lean we are as a city already, will likely mean cuts to services. The question is, what level of cuts will residents be willing to absorb?
…or investigating creative ways to provide a similar level of service at a lower cost like the possibility of consolidation of services with surrounding suburbs and/or privatization of some services.
Consolidation is the way to go. If the State mandate for recycling is over, then take the recyclind fee off my tax bill…and pick up my cart!!! It is about time that property taxes are frozen. Pick up garbage every other week, as that is fine with me.
Why do we need a library in St. Francis, Cudahy, and South Milwaukee????
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