Your Home Value has Declined

Your home value has declined. Can you at least get a break on your property taxes? In some cases, yes. Many municipalities' tax bills are due in May, and the tab for 2009 could be lower. As a rule, city and county assessors reappraise property values annually or biannually, using recent sales of comparable homes in the neighborhood to set values. So in areas that have seen significant drops in home prices, appraisals - and thereby property taxes - could also drop. 'Assessors have been flooded with requests from homeowners to reassess their home values,' said Los Angeles County Assessor Rick Auerbach. California is a special case, however, thanks to Proposition 13, a 30-year-old amendment to the state constitution that limited property tax increases to 2% per year. That meant that as California markets churned out double-digit price increases year after year, assessed values soon fell way behind market values. In other states, even if tax assessors reduce appraised values to reflect market conditions it still does not automatically mean a property tax cut. Localities could still raise their tax rates, the percentage of the home's value that is used along with the assessed valuation, to calculate the final bills. Source: CNN/Money

As the biggest residential property market in the United States, California often serves as a bellwether for the nation's economic health. And new research from that state suggests that housing prices nationally could start to rebound relatively soon. The latest data, including two consecutive monthly gains in the median price of existing homes, has some industry officials hopeful that the state housing market has finally reached a bottom and is poised to recover from a prolonged period of declining residential values. In April, California's single-family median home price rose 1.4 percent to $256,700. While that is still off by more than 36 percent from April 2008, the 540,360 homes sales on a seasonally adjusted annual basis reflect an increase of almost 50 percent over the same period, according to the state's Realtor group. Source: Wall Street Journal

Universities around the country are acquiring troubled condominium projects to use as student housing. In New York, Columbia University paid $67.6 million for a condo in the Bronx that was to be called the Arbor. It now will house graduate students. In Columbus, Ohio, Capital University paid $4 million for a building originally developed for ages 55 and older. It will house 60 juniors and seniors in good academic standing. With condo sales off 46 percent from the peak in June 2005, these sales are better than nothing for developers. And for universities, it's a great deal, too. 'This is a bonanza of an opportunity ... for universities to acquire the space they desperately need,' says Dan Fasulo, managing director of Real Capital Analytics. Source: The Associated Press