Making Home Affordable Programs: Wrestling With Your Mortgage Payment Every Month? You Have Options
Many homeowners are struggling right now to keep their homes and retain good credit in the face of plummeting equity, a tough real estate market and reduced income. If you are one of these homeowners don’t feel alone and don’t give up! You owe it to yourself to try a few things for yourself before you walk away. A simple avenue to help reduce your housing outflow is to ask for a property tax reduction. If you purchased your home or changed title from 2002 to 2007 chances are that you have lost equity and can establish a lower property tax basis. Depending on the previous value of your property this can be a substantial savings. You will need to get a market analysis done by your realtor to establish this change in value, however to start with if you have internet available verify the drop yourself by going to cyberhomes.com (I find this to be the most reliable site) and research your home value, this will tell you if you have a reduction or not and you need this for the next phase anyways. Assuming that you have lost equity, print out the report and either call a realtor for a comprehensive report and go in to see the tax assessor staff to ask about a reduction.