Many Calif. Home Owners Shocked at Property Tax Bills
With the housing market improving in California, thousands of home owners are now getting an unexpected surprise: Their property taxes are starting to soar. A law in California permits assessors to temporarily reduce property assessments when home values drop. But when values start heading back up, the law allows assessors to increase property taxes, in many cases even by more than 2 percent.
More than 37,000 home owners in Santa Clara County are seeing their property taxes increase by more than 2 percent this year because of the increase in home values in the home area, the San Jose Mercury News reports. Other counties across the state are seeing similar jumps. For example, one home owner in San Jose says her property taxes are expected to rise 9.4 percent this year alone.
While the rise in property taxes will help many of the counties’ squeezed budgets, home owners say they weren’t expecting the rise and it’s a “double-edged sword” — your property value finally goes back up but then so do your property taxes.
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