Property taxes going down for over half of Detroiters

This is long overdue

"More than half of Detroit’s residential property owners will have lower property tax bills this year, but 41 percent can expect modest increases, city officials said Monday.

The Duggan administration unveiled the proposed 2017 property assessments on the heels of the first parcel-by-parcel reappraisal of the city’s nearly 255,000 residential properties in 60 years.

“It’s been a three-year process, and today, we will be sending out the assessment notices, and everybody will get an assessment based on their individual houses,” Mayor Mike Duggan said during a Monday afternoon press conference at City Hall. “... Getting the assessment right is something that every homeowner should be entitled to expect.”

Officials said approximately 140,000 homeowners will see reductions in their taxes of about $263 each. Meanwhile, about 112,000 will see an average increase of about $80 each. The amounts for each will vary since each property was individually assessed, unlike past years, officials said.

The massive reappraisal project factored in aerial and street-level imagery of each home to provide a more accurate look at the city’s property values. More than 94 percent of homeowners will see a change of less than 10 percent in their assessed value, Duggan noted.

In the last three consecutive years, residential assessments for most in Detroit have come down."

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/new...ents/96946512/

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Originally Posted by MSUguy

The massive reappraisal project factored in aerial and street-level imagery of each home to provide a more accurate look at the city’s property values.

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So, they looked at Google Maps?

However they did it, I hope home owners get a more realistic assessment of their property.

Good that after so many years they will have established a new baseline which they can apply changes as values of real estate, hopefully, appreciates in future years.

Detroiters will then be able to expect some 'predictable' changes in their assessed values based on changes in real estate values in the years ahead.

This may be an initial hit to the treasury, but long term it should have a big pay off. Current owners will be incentivized to hold on and keep paid up, while new buyers won't be scared off.

I still think the state needs to designate hard hit residential district all over the state and structure stick-it-out tax credits to the home owners who suffer the consequences of higher insurance rates, not to mention putting up with blight, crime and inferior services, they endure.

It could do much to stop the sprawl/abandonment cycle.

Give the Mayor credit for trying but he is pissing on a forest fire.

As long as you can cut the property/rent tax rate by half or more with a 15 minute car ride in any direction Detroit has a big problem.

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Originally Posted by ABetterDetroit

Give the Mayor credit for trying but he is pissing on a forest fire.

As long as you can cut the property/rent tax rate by half or more with a 15 minute car ride in any direction Detroit has a big problem.

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I don't disagree with you [[I probably disagree about how big that big problem is, but let's leave that alone for now) except that the goal here wasn't to deal with Detroit's high tax rate, but to make the assessments fairer and more predictable. There has been a problem where the assessments routinely bore little relation to values, because there hadn't been a real reassessment for my entire lifetime, during which time the city had changed rather a lot. Fixing that problem is important, even though it doesn't affect the tax rate.