Last week, I had a couple of conversations with employees of the Board of Assessors at (912) 652-7271. I thought this information was worth sharing and is one of the great reasons to own property and live in Savannah! If you'd like to get it straight from the Board of Assessors’ web site, go to the link called “facts every taxpayer should know”.
http://www.chathamcounty.org/boa_facts.pdf

This photo of the Chatham County Courthouse at 133 Montgomery Street is the current location of the tax assessor’s office

Or if you have other questions or you'd just like to browse the website:
http://www.chathamcounty.org/assessor.html

So here is an example of how property taxation is handled if you were to buy a home in Savannah that was going to be your primary residence. Let’s say a person were to pay $535,000 for a property in June of 2007 and it had been appraised by the Board of Assessors staff at that time (the 2006 valuation actually) for $439,000. Now you might think, why in 2007, would you pay $96,000 over the current fair market value? Well, that is because the fair market value and the sales price do not always match. We often see properties sell for more, sometimes a great deal more. And to add insult to injury, just about the time you were due to close on the property, the soon-to-be former owner receives a notice of change in value LOWERING it to $407,500 so now your purchase price is actually $127,500 more than the 2007 fair market value. YIKES! (this actually has happened in the histoirc district in 2007) But buyer’s should actually take solace in the fact that because of the Stephens Day bill for Chatham County purposes only, the new property owner with homestead will be taxed on the base year value which is the key to this whole thing. In this case the base year value is the 2007 value, $407,500 so you will NOT be taxed on a value that has anything to do with what you pay for the property, and that is a good thing for buyers and sellers

To receive additional information on this, please go to the web site links above. If you wish to compute taxes for Chatham County, please contact the Chatham County Tax Commissioner at (912) 652-7100.

PS you can go into the Board of Assessors office and apply for the homestead exemption and Stephens-Day bill any time during regular business hours. Just bring your driver’s license and a current utility bill with your name on it and the property address.

But you must apply PRIOR to March 1 of the following year, in this case 2008. They tell me the lines get a bit long as we approach the deadline so go now if you can!

Until Next Week,

Ron Melander