Dekalb Property Tax Appeal

Please Check your "History of Values" on line.

INSTRUCTIONS TO CHECK YOUR "History of Values"

1. Go to Dekalb County Real Estate Data Search page.
2. In the "Address" box key in your street number and street name. Click Search.
3. Look for the link to your property on the next page and click on the link.
4. On the Property Overview page go to the bottom and click on the "Detailed Property Data" button.
5. Go to the bottom of the next page and look for "History of Values"

The more feed back I get from Dekalb citizens about their tax assessments; the more I realize that the Appraisals are absolutely bogus. I am now realizing that the errors in the system started in the 2009 to 2010 time frame when values began to drop so rapidly.  It appears that the county began jeer-rigging land values and building values to come up with a total land value.  I wounder if the computer system just was not setup to calculate decreases in values so the county had to manually override the system and manually key in values. This could account for the really bad numbers.  Below is an example of "History of Values" showing numbers in 2008 / 2009 that seem appropriate, but when Total Values begin to decline the the Land and Building Values really became skewed.

      In this example, the "Total Value" for 2010, $204,080 was a 20% decrease in value from 2009.  20% seems like a reasonable decrease in the total property value.  However, if the total property value went down 20% why did the Land Value not decrease by at least 20% if not more?    Back in the rising market gogo days of infill lots (tear-downs), lots in my neighborhood were selling for $250k to $300k. Now is a terrible time to have to sell a lot or home that is obsolete (tear-down).  So lot values are almost nill.  On the other hand, Building Values are actual compressed.  If your house burns completely to the ground, you might be hard pressed to rebuild the same number of square feet for the county's Building Value.
    So for 2010 I believe a more representative valuation from the county would have been 20% decrease in both land (see green arrow above) and building.

20% Percent decrease
	Yr 2009		Yr 2010
Land Value	62,600	20%	50,080
Building Value	192,500	20%	154,000
Total Value	255,100		204,080

For 2011 I have no idea why the Total Value remained the same, 204,080 but the Land Value went up by 120% to 137,800 and the Building Value went down by 53% to 66,280. (See red arrows above)