Property Tax Appeals If you believe your house is unfairly over-assessed, the City of West Allis Tax Assessor can provide you with a tax appeal form and inform you of the tax appeal process.
If your appeal is accepted, your property valuation and property taxes will be adjusted accordingly. How can I contact City of West Allis? County Courthouse. Get directions to the county offices. How can we improve this page? We value your comments and suggestions! Federal Income Tax. My Tax Refund. Tax Brackets.
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West Allis Tax Portal
More Tax-Rates. In the State Legislature had decided to bring property assessments all around the State to some common level of assessment to protect the idea that taxation must be Uniform under our Constitution. Prior to that change, assessments in every town, village or city were different and could be any fraction of the overall market level depending on where you went across the State. The assessment ratio on the tax bill was included as a way to show taxpayers that their Towns, Villages and Cities were adjusting assessments periodically to keep up with real estate market changes.
The EFMV was added as well as a misguided attempt to help taxpayers decide if their assessment was on the right track. The EFMV is calculated simply by dividing the assessment by the assessment ratio. The assessment ratio is an overall comparison of the market sale prices of all properties that sold the previous year with their assessment at the time of sale to see how far apart they are. This comparison gives us an idea of how the overall market had changed over that time, but unfortunately not much about a single home. The Assessment ratio is calculated by the Department of Revenue by statistically mashing up the sales prices of all the property that sold in a municipality, including residential, commercial and industrial parcels, even though these kinds of properties perform very differently from each other.
It is then compared to the assessed value of these properties to find the ratio between the two. At the end of the day, the EFMV and assessment ratio are meant to help City and State officials know when a market-adjusted Citywide Revaluation is necessary rather than anything specific about any individual property. Does the location of my property influence its value?
The City is divided into neighborhoods that have similar characteristics and are considered to be comparable. Also, we carefully account for unusual detrimental conditions that affect only certain properties, but do not influence the majority in the area. This means that we try to recognize the differences between neighborhoods so that even though you may not be seeing sales on your block, we can use homes that sell in similar neighborhoods to see what those on your block would probably sell for.
You should arrange to appear before the Board of Review to offer sworn testimony and other evidence supporting an alternative estimate of value. The City Clerk's office will provide you with two forms approved by the Department of Revenue to complete, sign and return.
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Both forms must be timely filed to preserve your standing to request a hearing. It is too late to file an objection when you receive your tax bill in December. Paying your taxes under protest does not constitute an assessment objection. Upon an inspection, a property's assessment will increase to reflect that the property itself was better than our records indicated. It will decrease if the property is worse than our records describe, or stay the same if we find that our records accurately describe the property. Can my assessment change in the years between citywide revaluations?
The only time a property assessment typically changes between revaluations is when we become aware that the owner of the property has made improvements that resulted in the property becoming more desirable than houses of similar age and style. If our record of the home did not reflect these improvements, even if they occurred in the past, a correction will be made to reflect the home as it is now. Alternatively, if a desirable feature is removed, like a garage, deck or central air conditioner, the home may be less desirable and the record should be corrected to reflect that change as well.
In such a review, market conditions are not taken into consideration. Can the assessment on my property be changed even if the assessor has not been inside my property? A concise version of this record is available online for your review and contains a complete physical description, photo, footprint and other relevant information for each property. All together there are about 17, residential and 1, commercial property records. Over time, we continually update these records based on information gathered when a property sells, from building permits or construction plans or upon actual inspection.
While West Allis has determined that it would not be cost effective to conduct a city-wide interior inspection program, a representative sample of all types of properties are inspected on an annual basis for the purposes of sale review, construction permit checks and review requests. Citizens can also request a review of their property record. If appropriate, the property record will be updated based on the results of an Interior Review inspection.
Record updates can result in either an increase or a decrease in the assessed value, depending on how the property compares to our record at the time of the inspection.
How can my assessment change when I haven't done anything to my property? General economic conditions in a community affect the value of real estate located there. In times of high demand, property values increase more rapidly and when buyers are scarce property values may rise slowly or even fall. Other factors such as changing interest or inflation rates and property tax laws will influence the value of real estate as well. Will I be notified if there is a change in my assessment? In the Spring of each year, a Notice of Change of Assessment will be mailed to all property owners whose assessment has changed from the previous year, prior to the annual Board of Review.
This change could have resulted from a Citywide revaluation or from a change in the physical nature of the property such as an improvement or demolition. Each year, the Tax Bill and Assessment Notice will be mailed to the mailing address on record.
I just purchased my home for less or more than the assessed value. Will you change my assessment to match my sale price? The reason is that a single sale does not tell us much about what the overall market might think of your house. For that information, we need to look at all of the market sales over an extended period of time. In some market periods, a Cape Cod home will sell for more than a Bungalow of the same size and location, but at other times this trend reverses itself, and the Bungalow will sell for more.
Treasurer's Office
Our first obligation under the law is to split up the burden of tax between all of the property owners in a Uniform and Equitable way, where each property is asked to bear a proportional share of the total tax burden. In other words, the law requires us to ensure that similar homes have similar tax bills using the Assessment estimated market value as a guide. The family across the street was foreclosed on by the bank who sold their home for a lot less than the assessed value; isn't that proof my assessment should be lowered?
Assessments are almost never lowered due to sales of foreclosed homes. Foreclosed properties are being marketed by lenders who have seized them for non-payment and under pressure to dispose of the property as soon as possible to meet Federal restrictions on Banks owning real estate. While there have been more foreclosure-related sales since than any time during the past 20 years, foreclosure sales have always been part of the market. In this downturn, Wisconsin has fared better than most states as real estate values adjust to the economic climate.
Just as foreclosure-related sales are frequently not an indicator of market value when values are rising, they are not necessarily an indicator of value in a declining market and are not normally considered by the assessor when determining the market value of property in a community. However, if many discounted properties are available to buyers in a given market, all other properties must reduce their prices to compete.
In this way market sales prices are negatively influenced by the presence of discount properties in a market. In fact, Wisconsin law, appraisal standards, and Wisconsin courts, require very specific criteria for a sale to be considered as a reliable indicator of market value. Two of the most important of these criteria are whether the sale occurred under duress such as a forced sale and whether the property had adequate market exposure.
For example, a property that sells two weeks after it is listed may have sold quickly because it was under-priced. In most cases, looking at non-foreclosure sales is the most reliable way to gauge what is actually happening with neighborhood values. There are times when the majority of homes that are selling in your neighborhood tend to be around the same price as foreclosure-related sales. In this case, they may represent a reasonable picture of market value This is a common misconception.
The only way individual property taxes go down is if the amount of money your County Board, Common Council, Public and Technical School Boards or Sewerage District Board spends to run the government each year is decreased.