Home Buyers Relocation’s Weblog

Here we’d like to announce a new (and free) service available to our friends,   It’s a remarkable service intended to speak to home ownership and personal finances.   You can subscribe yourself under the “What’s New” button, directly below this “Blog” button. 

Here’s why we think you’ll find it useful.   It’s called, “My Home Management Club”.  Basically, it’s an incredibly large and sophisticated internet-based library of information and tools for managing your home and your finances.  It was developed over the last couple of years by selected realty professionals, intending a “high road” of extraordinary, trustworthy information and tools.  Users can gain access 24/7 from anywhere, with the password supplied.   Short E-alerts, pointing to topical information arrive twice monthly.  

First, it’s probably obvious that it’s a service that we purchase for our clients.  The content is lightyears more than we could accomplish ourselves.  We will have a “local” section, though.  It’s being offered to our future, present and past clients and some special friends, for as long as they want it into the future, free of course. Secondly, we’ve followed the content for many months and have been very impressed.  We’re especially amazed with the interactive stuff, where you can pull up all kinds of local information on demographics, schools, housing sales and the like…and the results are astonishingly accurate.   So that’s use # 1 for you.   

Then there’s also a great library on hundreds of subjects having to do with home ownership.  These “reports” are constantly being added and upgraded…your use # 2. Your use # 3 is to report on “hot topics”…subjects of the day that you’ll also see in print and TV media.  Again, these reports are very much on target.  These will be noticed in bi-monthly “E-alerts”….short email notes carrying this information and pointing to more.    

It’s not intended to substitute for information on our internet sites, or information from our office, but in fact designed to augment it.   Of course, you can always opt out…but we do hope you give it a try…we think it’s an amazing tool.  Finally, we would greatly appreciate your feedback…what you like and what you don’t, and how we might integrate it best into overall support.  

To Subscribe: Go to the button, “What’s New”….the lower right icon will be for My Home Management Club.  Just go there and follow the sign-up instructions. We hope you’ve noticed significant improvements to these web sites, including, even, this Blog.  But we might also tell you here about a popular service developing around “tracking” neighborhood sales.   If a resale is anywhere in your future, we can easily set up a “tracker” of sales in your immediate neighborhood that would notify you of the details of each closing as it occurs, hence you can get a feel for resale values and timing.  Call Debbie to set this up. 

Altogether, we’re trying to make OfallonHomes.com and EdwardsvilleHomes.com THE definitive relocation site for transferees into these areas.  Obviously, we would welcome referrals to these sites and to our offices, and we appreciate the many referrals that have come from our past clients.  That confidence is a most precious gift, and we’ll never betray it with less than our best service.   We do hope you “join up” and that you enjoy “My Home Management Club”. 

Paul and Merrill Ottwein, Brokers

About the “Real Estate Tax Equalization Process” currently going on in St. Clair County. 

We’ve received many inquiries about this process and how it might affect individual tax bills for county residents, especially, residents of O’fallon Township.

This morning, (June 16) I had a lengthy conversation with The St. Clair County Board of Review Director, and came away with a much better understanding.   Here is what they say is going on:

First, they flatly claim that some areas, notably all of O’Fallon Township, have been “under assessed”.   The touted (and legally required) quadrennial assessment is behind and so therefore are updates in assessments.  A review of all residential sales from 2007 (excluding foreclosures and other “distressed” sales,) by The Board of Review defined therefore, the “equalization factor” for the whole…so all residents have been increased by that common factor, 1.04, or a bit more than a 4% increase.  (Some, notably O’Fallon City execs have criticized the exclusion of foreclosures, but state law evidently allows that.  Keep in mind that these sales were from 2007, presumably a year of depressed sales values anyway.)

So the cards people have been receiving are from The Board of Review and not the Assessor’s office.  Therefore, the ordinary procedures for protesting tax assessments do NOT prevail:

Ordinary procedures for protesting individual assessments are made after the Assessor does his job and the Assessor reports to the owner, where objections are filed first with The Board of Review itself.  

            Here, the Board of Review is leveling the “equalization factor” against every single property, (NOT the Assessor, and in fact, The Board of Review is rather criticizing the Assessor as not having done his job properly…hence the need for the overall adjustment.

And that makes a great deal of difference in how objections are made:

            Since The Board of Review is applying the “equalization factor”, an owner cannot file an objection with them, it must be done directly with a state agency called, “The Property Tax Appeal Board”, (web site: www.state.il.us/agency/ptab.)

            And the complaint there can only be with the “tax equalization factor” set.  That agency is not prepared to deal with individual assessments otherwise.

            And in my mind, that makes it nearly impossible, surely improbable, to win.  I see visions of Don Quixote’s “Windmill Tilting”.

So this “bottom line”:  Individuals should work through the math and see how it affects them.  Take the assessed value after the equalization factor is applied and multiply it times 3, (because assessed values are 1/3 of real.)  Compare that number with what you’ve paid for the home, or what you think the home is really worth.  In the several cases I’ve worked through, these new assessed values, after “equalization”, are still a bit under the purchase price, making it difficult to lodge an objection.

If the new assessed value is substantially higher, than I would go to The Board of Review and ask them what you should do to object.  I believe the advice would include preparing a case for the Board of Review based on “comparables” (valuations of homes equal to yours,) in the ordinary way in which taxes are challenged.  There’s a time window here, too, so ask about it. We can help find the comparables.

You’re going to be discouraged by The Board of Review to file the objection with the state, which would be limited in scope to objecting to the equalization factor itself.  But you probably deserve to hear that directly from them….at 277-6600, extensions are 2493, 2488 and 2489.

Sorry about the discouraging word….Merrill 6/18/08