Last year (2012) I spoke to a property owner concerned about his tax assessment. He has a 5 acre parcel (unimproved) in Genoa Township and didn’t like the rate. He was especially upset that his assessment never went down during the years of the ‘recession’. So I ran some comps, suggested that he pursue it to the State Tax Tribunal if unsuccessful at the local level (almost a certainty), and also mentioned that my empirical evidence was that those retaining either an attorney or CPA had the most luck at the tribunal.
This year, he called again. I ran new comps, formatted them in a variety of ways and mailed them off. I’ve never met Mr. & Mrs. ‘K’ but he seemed very nice, and frankly, with my CMA/BPO skills this didn’t take much time. He willingly shared his contact info with me, too.
Today I received the thank you from left field. Using the data I supplied he got a 30% reduction in his assessment. He never asked me to appear with him, and didn’t come back for additional iterations of data.
It makes me feel like a million bucks to be of assistance to a local resident and to help them save a few dollars. I did this without the thought or promise of compensation. I was happy that he called me because I knew that I would be in the top 5% of local agents that could give him information of value. Some agents would have gone through the motions only, others would have pressed him to sell the property. The time and effort I spent was well rewarded by the feeling I got when I opened the thank you card from left field.
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