If you have bought a home in San Mateo County in the last several years, you may be eligible for a reduction in your property taxes. Upon request, the tax assessor will reassess the tax value of your home. By following a few rules, you may save yourself some money.

How to Lower Your San Mateo County Property Taxes – Thank Prop 8

In 1978, California voters passed Proposition 8, which allows for a temporary tax reduction when a home’s market value on Jan. 1 is less than the prior year’s assessed value.

Let’s say you bought a house in 2006 for $500,000. In January 2008, it should be assessed at $510,000, allowing for the 2 percent inflation adjustment which the law permits.

But suppose comparable homes in your neighborhood are now going for $400,000. You might qualify for a $100,000 reduction in assessed value, which would save you about $1,000 on your tax bill. Here is how to apply…

How to Apply

The first step is an informal review. Homeowners who think the value of their home Jan. 1 is less than the assessed value can request an informal review from their county assessor. The tax assessor, using sales data as of Jan. 1 for comparable homes in the neighborhood, will determine whether a temporary reduction is warranted. Homeowners can request an informal review by filling out this form.

If homeowner and assessor cannot agree on a value through this informal process, the homeowner can file a formal appeal with the county’s assessment appeals board. The appeal must be filed by Sept. 15 or Nov. 30, depending on the county, and might require a fee. The homeowner who disagrees with the tax assessor’s determination may submit his or her case to the appeals board, which has the final authority on the property’s value.

Property Tax Reduction is Only Temporary

You should be aware that the Proposition 8 reduction is only temporary. After you are granted a reduction, the assessor will automatically review your home’s market value as of Jan. 1 each year and may adjust the assessed value; however, the assessed value cannot go higher than it would have been had you never received the temporary reduction.

For more information, visit the San Mateo County CARE website or email the San Mateo County Tax Assessor at assessor@smcare.org to request a “Decline in Value” Reassessment Application Form.

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Raymond Stoklosa, Chela Stoklosa and Rebecca Williamson are Realtors with The RayChel Realty Group specializing in Santa Clara and San Mateo Real Estate.

Realtor.com is notorious for boasting how many listings they have on their site and driving consumers to use their site as their only home search site. Consumers see all the homes they have for sale, as compared to other home search sites and think Realtor.com must know of some properties that the other sites don’t. In reality, a lot of the properties listed for sale on Realtor.com are either pending sales, have incorrect information, or have already sold.

How Many Homes Have Already Been Sold?

Take Belmont for example. Today, Realtor.com showed 99 properties for sale in Belmont. In reality, there are only 55 homes for sale today. That is 44 homes on Realtor.com that are not even for sale.

How About San Mateo?

How about San Mateo? Realtor.com shows 531 homes listed for sale, whereas there are really only 234 homes actively listed for sale. The other 297 homes listed on Realtor.com have sold.

Why Does Realtor.com Have More Listings?

Realtor.com’s main business is selling advertising to Realtors and other companies in related industries, not providing accurate information to consumers. The Realtor who is listing the property for sale that has already sold is hoping you’ll see that house, like it, call them up and then they’ll say I’m sorry that house is already sold, but we have others in your price range. Would you like to take a look at those? Mission accomplished. They got you to call them and start a dialogue from an ad for a house that was never available to begin with.

Are There “Secret Properties”?

Reality is, there are no secret homes listed for sale. If the home is for sale, it will be on the MLS. Rarely do we have a listing that is not marketed through the MLS. When that does happen, and it isn’t often, most Realtors who are active in the business will know about the property through word of mouth, emails or the Board. Don’t believe any person or website that claims to have more listings as another website or person. Anyone who tells you this is not being truthful.

Want Accurate Information about Homes Currently for Sale?

If you want accurate information, it is best to visit a site like SanMateoHomesInfo.com, which pulls directly from the MLS (the database where Realtors get their information). All of the properties shown on SanMateoHomesInfo.com are currently available. If they’re not available, they will say Pending Sale, which effectively means that house has sold. Sites like SanMateoHomesInfo.com have an interest in providing accurate information to consumers. We feel your time is important and don’t want you to waste it looking at inventory that is no longer available.

In the Market to Buy or Sell?

Contact us today for a free, no obligation consultation. We’ll tell you about our exclusive Buyer Representation Program that is All About You! and our Stress Free Home Listing that is guaranteed to get your home sold fast, even in a Buyer’s Market.

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• Real Estate Myth Busted: I’ll Get the Best Deal if I Call the Agent Listed on the For Sale Sign
  
• Paying More than $1,600 in Rent? You Could Own in 2009!
  

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Raymond Stoklosa, Chela Stoklosa and Rebecca Williamson are Realtors with The RayChel Realty Group specializing in Santa Clara and San Mateo Real Estate.

Relocation.com, the largest online marketplace connecting consumers who are moving to professionals that can best service their needs, evaluated San Francisco Bay Area real estate agent’s blogs in the San Francisco Bay Area. Six blogs made the list and….LivingWellinSanMateo.com was one of them!

What Categories Were Considered?

The folks at Relocation.com sought out to find hyper local real estate blogs that provided information about neighborhoods, market data and published explanatory real estate articles about current, relevant topics like foreclosures.

What Did Relocation.com Have to Say About LivingWellinSanMateo?

Living Well in San Mateo from Raymond Stoklosa, Rebecca Williamson, and Chris Williamson does a nice job breaking down the local neighborhoods in San Mateo (like Hallmark), as well as some real estate basics stuff for novice homebuyers or just homebuyers who could need some brushups about current real estate issues, including this post on questions to ask when buying a short sale.

What Do We Have to Say About Relocation.com?

Relocation.com has some great articles directed at those of you who are relocating. For example, their post, Need Storage? Nine Questions You Must Ask broke down some key questions everyone should ask before they choose a storage space property.

For others who’ve seen those mobile storage PODs and want to know more, check out their Mobile Storage: The Right Choice for You?

Relocating to Chicago, Los Angeles or Minneapolis/St. Paul? Check out their top blogs for these great cities!

Thanks, Relocation.com!

We’re thrilled to be mentioned on your list of top real estate blogs in the San Francisco Bay Area!

Other Posts You May Enjoy

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• Neighborhood Spotlight: Belmont’s Hallmark Neighborhood
  
• Paying More than $1,600 in Rent? You Could Own in 2009!
  
• Bay Area with Two of Top Cities to Buy a Home in 2009
  
• REOs – Profit Opportunity or Prescription for Frustration?
  

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Where Do I Find Information About San Mateo County Schools?

One of the factors that affect property values is the strength of the public schools. Even if your children are grown or if you aren’t planning on having any children, it is still a good idea to take a look at the schools in the areas you are looking to move. As we’ve said before, the best time to think about selling your house is before you buy it. Properties that are in better performing school districts will sell faster and fetch a higher price.

Families with children should pay close attention to the schools in the area, especially if you are planning to send your children to a public school. There are a few sites that provides detailed information about each individual school, the district and the students.

GreatSchools

GreatSchools.net is a great place to start your search. GreatSchools is more of a word driven report with parent and staff reviews, student test scores, financial data, school environment, district overviews and teacher stats. If you know the specific schools in the neighborhood, you can search by school. However, you can also start with a zip code and narrow your search to the specific schools you want to compare.

To make it easy to compare the schools, GreatSchools assigns each school a rank from 1-10, 10 being the highest possible score. As this is an overall ranking, you can click through the school’s report to find out each school’s strengths and weaknesses.

California Dept of Education – DataQuest

The California Department of Education’s DataQuest site is more of a numbers driven report. There you will find information about the school’s performance including API (Academic Performance Index) and Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), test scores, student demographics, school staffing, and student misconduct information. This information is available at the State, County, District and School level. You can also create your own report with the information that is most important to you.

Education Data Partnership

The Education Data Partnership is another resource that provides information about bond and parcel tax elections, district comparisons with detailed financial reports, list of schools in each district and provides teacher salary information. The site also compares California schools to other schools in the nation and provides explanations of California school issues and policies.

For a list of the top schools in San Mateo County, fill out the form below.

cforms contact form by delicious:days

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• Redwood Shores Elementary School to Open in 2009
  

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Some of you potential San Mateo County home buyers may have heard about NeighborhoodScout.com. Although it’s been around awhile now, we hadn’t really explored the site, which claims to match home buyer to their perfect neighborhood. So, I took a test drive of the site to see how well it performed.

The user-interface is very intuitive, but I was a bit surprised just how few questions they asked before providing you with a match list. You can see below that the drop-box gives you a few choices for “perfect neighborhoods” in my selected geography, San Mateo, California. (It also allows you to select a radius around the city you chose – a nice feature for San Mateo County home buyers considering multiple cities.)

NeighborhoodScout Search Box

The “First-time homebuyers” caught my interest, so I decided to take a scan of those results. You can probably imagine that I was a bit surprised that Atherton, California (Middlefield Road/ Ringwood Ave.) came up as the top match – followed by Woodside, California (Town Center) and then Hillsborough, California. While I am sure we would all love to buy our first home in Atherton, there are not many San Mateo County first-time buyers can afford to spend upwards of $1.8M on their first home, but I dove further into the results.

Results List

Neighborhood Detail

When you actually look at the neighborhood information it gives you, it does have some solid information. It does note the Atherton, California is the one of the most expensive places to live in both California and the country at large – which is accurate. Plus, it also throws in some information on the character of the neighborhood and socio-demographics.

Neighborhood Look & Feel

Lifestyle Information

The other tool that NeighborhoodScout.com offers is a matching tool – which could potentially be great for those looking to relocate to an area. The feature promises to match your address to a neighborhood in a new area.

Match Tool

So, our overall evaluation of NeighborhoodScout.com is mixed. While I would recommend it to get information on various San Mateo County neighborhoods, I wouldn’t put together a list of areas based on its recommendations. Again, our research shows that the internet is great for browsing, but when it comes to buying your new San Mateo County home, there is no substitute for a great San Mateo Realtor.

Looking for more neighborhood information? Click here for our posts on San Mateo homes, Redwood Shores homes, San Carlos homes and Belmont homes

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We’ve talked a lot about the necessity of showing your home in great condition. This is critical in a Buyers’ Market, but you can have too much of a good thing. It is important to keep in mind that you can be pouring money into improvements that won’t significantly affect the sales price you will get for your San Mateo County home.

To help you begin to understand what repairs you should consider, HomeGain.com has released a Home Sales Maximizer, an online tool designed to help you decide which repairs and improvements will actually increase the value of your San Mateo County home, but does it work?

We tested it out and we think it’s a great tool to help you take inventory of the possible improvements that could (or should) be made. As for the results, they’re mixed. When it comes down to it, it’s important to take into consideration many unique factors, such as home location, local market performance, etc., to really determine which improvements will pay off. A local real estate professional can really help with this, and we’d recommend giving us a call if you are thinking about selling. My team and I give complimentary home evaluations to help potential San Mateo County sellers understand their options.

We love the advancements that the internet has brought to the table in San Mateo County real estate, but remember that in the end, you have to get offline and make your transaction happen.

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• Housing Crunch, 90210 – San Mateo County View
  

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I wanted to let everyone know about a new service offered by one of our contributors, Chris Williamson, over at the San Mateo Mortgage Blog announced today that the Mortgage Adoption Center or the MAC for short has finally launched. The Mortgage Adoption Center is for anybody that would like some help monitoring their mortgage loan.

The Mortgage Adoption Center would be great for you if:

• You have not heard from your loan person since your closing
• You can’t even recall your loan person’s name (which is the reason you refer to them as your loan person)
• Your loan person does not call you every time there is an opportunity for you to save money on your mortgage
• Your loan person does not contact you every time there is a change in the market that may affect you as a homeownerIf you answered ‘yes’ to any of these questions, sign up at the Mortgage Adoption Center today!
  

Read the Mortgage Adoption Center Press Release on Yahoo News.

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With gas prices at an all time high, we are seeing more and more of our clients looking for neighborhoods within walking distance of restaurants and shopping. For those of you looking to find a walkable neighborhood, begin your home search at WalkScore.com.

Simply put in an address (or city and navigate the Google Map that pops up) to see local Grocery Stores, Coffee Shops, Restaurants, Bars, Movie Theatres, Schools, Parks, Libraries, bookstores, Fitness centers, Drug stores, Hardware stores, clothing and music stores, etc. Walk Score also developed an algorithm that calculates a number between 1-100 that estimates the area’s “walkability.” -What does this score mean?

• 90-100 = Walkers’ Paradise: Most errands can be accomplished on foot and many people get by without owning a car.
• 70-89 = Very Walkable: It’s possible to get by without owning a car.
• 50-69 = Somewhat Walkable: Some stores and amenities are within walking distance, but many everyday trips still require a bike, public transportation, or car.
• 25-49 = Car-Dependent: Only a few destinations are within easy walking range. For most errands, driving or public transportation is a must.
• 0-24 = Car-Dependent (Driving Only): Virtually no neighborhood destinations within walking range. You can walk from your house to your car!

  Do you only want to look at properties that are in walkable areas? Walk Score is a great tool to narrow down your list of potential new neighborhoods. Plug the property’s address into Walk Score to determine whether or not it is worth previewing. Don’t waste time and money driving around to properties you would never consider living in.

  Curious about your Walk Score or the Walk Score of an area you are looking to relocate? Use our Walk Score widget in the left panel of LivingWellinSanMateo.com to find out.

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Raymond has talked a lot about doing your homework when shopping for a home, but we all know that takes time — and time is not a luxury I usually have. So what do you do when you’re stuck at your desk? How do you still buy a house to come home to?… Get creative on the internet!

It’s true that nothing takes the place of actually visiting the house yourself, but you can do a lot of filtering before you start making trips. By now, you’re probably signed up for email searches of homes that match your criteria (and if you’re not, you can sign up right here at LivingWell), but as you may have figured out, pictures of the house can’t help you determine how busy the street is or how close the neighbors are, etc.

But thanks to our friends at Google, there’s now a great way to figure this out — Google Earth!

Before you take the time to see the property, run a quick search for it using Google Earth. From the comfort of your computer, you can check out the street, general location of the home, even the backyard! Be warned though… it’s addictive.

You can download Google Earth at earth.google.com

There’s time to do your homework as long as you work smart!

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As we have said many times before, all real estate is local. Relying on generic reports about the real estate market in the U.S., California, or even as localized as San Mateo County or your city, is not always an accurate representation of how the market is performing in your neighborhood.

Market Snapshot pulls information from the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) Realtors use to search for homes, gather market data, research market trends, and prepare comparative market analyses so the information is always up to date and accurate. The Market Snapshot is an interactive report that provides information on:

• Homes listed in your neighborhood including price, square footage, number of beds/baths, pictures, days on market
• Asking price vs. selling price – what your neighbors asked for their home versus what their home sold for
• Number of homes on the market vs. number of homes sold
• Recent market activity
• Community information (arts and entertainment, shopping, public services, places of worship, recreation and leisure, food and drink)
• Neighborhood school information

The data are graphed to show recent trends. By providing your name, email and home address, you will receive this detailed report delivered to your email as often as every 2 weeks, for the interested home seller, or as infrequent as every 8 weeks, for the home owner just wanting to keep up with their local market.

With your subscription to this free service, Raymond will sit down with you to interpret this data and what it means to you and your home selling situation – no matter where you are in the home selling process.

Don’t rely on general media outlets to get information on the real estate market. Sign up for the MLS Market Snapshot in the right pane of Living Well in San Mateo.

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