Kim Davidson lives in Bonita, Calif., a San Diego suburb hit hard by tumbling property values. Earlier this year, she made the best of a bad situation and appealed her tax assessment. The county reduced her annual tax bill by more than $1,000 to $3,500.
"I did the whole thing online and walked [my application] down to the mailbox, and a month and a half later, I learned I saved all that money," says Ms. Davidson, a 44-year-old account manager for a business consulting firm, who purchased the home last year. "It was incredible."
Tens of thousands of homeowners across the country are trying to wring something positive from an epic real-estate crash. In Cuyahoga County, Ohio, which includes Cleveland, hit hard by rising unemployment and foreclosures, nearly 23,000 property owners applied for property-tax reductions this year, up from an annual average of 1,700. Appeals in California's Sacramento County soared to 12,000 in 2008 from a typical rate of 1,800 a year earlier.
The number of property owners seeking a tax reduction in Clark County, Nevada, which includes Las Vegas, soared to 6,000 this year from about 1,000 annually in recent years. About three-quarters of those who filed appeals succeeded in having their valuations lowered, most by 30% to 40%, county officials say. The county already had reduced valuations across the board for the vast majority of its residential property owners, says Michele Shafe, assistant director of the Clark County Assessor's office. She said staffers had to work overtime and Saturdays to keep up with demand for reassessments.
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