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More O.C. Homeowners Contesting Property Taxes

More than 17,000 property owners in Orange County have signed up to contest their home value assessments in an attempt to get lower property taxes this year, according to reports from O.C.'s Clerk of the Board of Supervisor's Office.

The number is up 8% from last year, where only a little over 16,000 owners had signed up, said appeals division head Pat Martinez. The reports were taken from data collected up to November 19 of this year.

Experts believe the tax appeals are a result of the plunging home prices in early 2009. Assessment officials typically use property values around January, when local home prices appeared to hit rock bottom throughout the county.

Real estate information provider DataQuick reports that median home prices fell to $370,000 at the start of the year-approximately the same time as the tax lien date--compared to $520,000 the previous year.

Home prices have consistently gone up countrywide since then, rising 18% to $436,500 in October. Since homeowners are given lower assessments when property values fall below the taxable amount, many distressed owners have taken advantage.

The Assessor's Office has already reduced the tax assessments for over 200,000 parcels of land, more than a fifth of the county's 897,000. Owners can appeal their assessments, which determine their property taxes, if they believe they weren't sufficiently lowered.

Darlene Bloom, the county's Clerk of the Board, had previously projected that tax appeals would rise by 85% this year, although the increase failed to take place.