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Notes -
For those of us who are unfamiliar with real-estate finance, can you explain the difference between them and how it applies to this case? They both sound like they mean 'How much is this building/land worth?', but if there is a legitimate difference between them....
An appraisal will tell you roughly what the market value of a property is. An assessment will tell you what the government values the property at for tax purposes. You might think that those should be the same, but in many, if not most, jurisdictions, they aren’t. Some city and county assessors even provide separate assessment and appraisal values each year.
The last time we discussed this, I gave the example of farmland in my area, which is pretty much universally assessed at around $2,000 per acre, even though the sale price of farmland is typically close to $20,000 per acre. The counties choose to assess farmland at a far lesser rate than its market value in order to keep farming financially viable in the area. It’s essentially a sort of hidden subsidy. Some jurisdictions also cap the rate at which property taxes can rise from year to year, which can eventually cause assessments to fall far behind appraisal values, even if they were once fairly close.
I mean California is the obvious example that does this explicitly. I believe Cali assessed tax value is based on approximately last sale value.
Two identical properties next door each other will have vastly different assessed values. If house 1 was last sold in 1955 it’s value will be like $10k for taxes even if the identical house next door sold in 2023 has a tax assessed value of $3 million.
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