Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Our fabulously appreciating cabin

So we have spent most of the last 2 nights untangling a property nightmare that makes me wish we lived in the USA just long enough to sort this out. The long story slightly shorter: our cabin was reassessed, as the entire municipality was, a couple of years ago. Apparently the assessors didn't see the cabin the first time around, and still came up with an appraised value of the property that was just slightly lower that what we bought it for so we thought nothing of it as it was a down economy.

Then, they found the cabin and decided it was worth a lot. And created a Supplemental Tax Bill that we never received telling us how much more we needed to pay based on this. Mind you, our tax bills went up substantially in this time, almost doubling from one year to the next, and then fully doubling the next year. So without this bill we never received we had no reason to think they weren't taxing us enough. And I was informed by the county office that it was my legal duty to inquire as to whether a supplemental bill was ever issued, even though the regular bills never had trouble finding my address.

Now we have the Delinquent Tax Notice. Of course. And after 2 entire evenings spent on the phone, we finally have a straight answer regarding for what value the property was assessed. Lo, miracle of miracles, apparently our little 700 sq. ft cabin is worth 50% more (in a tanking economy) than we paid for it (in an up economy).

Think we should sell?

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