Des Moines Rising Property Taxes : Recent Tax Assessment Protest Instructions

Some Des Moines home owners are dealing with a substantial raise in property taxes. From a recent column by Marc Hansen in The Des Moines Register, When I saw that, I had trouble sleeping:

Patrisha Dean is still trying to figure out what the county assessor sees in her home…Dean is a 74-year-old widow who lives in the Highland Park neighborhood of Des Moines. She has blond hair and a laugh that will not be contained, unless she’s talking about her latest property assessment. In just two years, it went from $80,400 to $105,100 – a 30.7 percent increase for Dean’s little yellow bungalow. And she swears she didn’t make a single improvement.

Here’s a fun piece of information:

The house next door was assessed at $88,000, up from $78,200 in 2005, which was more in keeping with the average increase. The house next door has an upstairs and more bedrooms.

I think I’m missing the logic of that one.

If you think your recent tax assessment is unfair, you can appeal. A recent note from a real estate colleague may help:

I went out onto the assessors page and printed the homes in my neighborhood that had lower assessment and then I mailed my results in. Mine got declined and I have been told by several agents after that what I should have done it took all my paper work down and personally went up in front of the board of review and then they would have lowered it without hesitation.

That makes sense as long as the homes you are using are similar to your own, but that shouldn’t be too hard to do. If all else fails, your real estate agent can email you some comparable sales to print out.

The Des Moines Register also points out that “If you have any questions about the appeal process, call the board at (515) 725-0338 or Ed Wallace at the Iowa Taxpayers Association at (515) 243-0300.”

You can also protest online. Go to this page on the Polk County Assessor website and enter your address. It will then take you to a page where you can verify your information; at the very bottom of that page is a link to fill out a protest form. Go directly to the property tax protest form by clicking here.

Remember: You only have until May 5th!