Real estate values in Contra Costa have been declining recently. Although that’s bad news for property owners, it creates a silver lining for some of us: the opportunity to lower our property taxes.

Under Proposition 13, the County Assessor automatically raises the assessed value of your property by 2% each year. If you bought recently or if you have a condominium, the true market value of your property may be less than the assessed value, which means you can work with the Assessor to reduce your assessed value and pay less tax.

Proposition 8 mandates that the County Assessor temporarily lower a property's assessed value if it exceeds the market value on January 1. This applies to situations like the current real estate market downturn or property damage, but reductions are not permanent and are reviewed annually. Unlike Proposition 13, which caps annual increases at 2% (adjusted for inflation), Proposition 8 has no limit on reductions or restorations, but values cannot exceed the Proposition 13 ceiling upon recovery. Eligibility requires evidence that your property's market value is below the current assessment, such as comparable sales data.

Requesting an Informal Value Review

Start with an informal request for a value review under Proposition 8, which is simpler than a formal appeal. For residential or multi-family properties, submit a written letter or the county's Request for Value Review form to the Assessor's Office at 2530 Arnold Drive, Suite 100, Martinez, CA 94553, or fax it to (925) 313-7488. Include your parcel number, contact details, property address, your opinion of the January 1 market value, and up to three comparable sales (with addresses, sale dates before March 31, prices, square footage, and descriptions). The deadline is November 30 for the upcoming fiscal year. The Assessor will analyze your evidence against neighborhood sales and notify you of any changes. If approved, your taxes adjust accordingly, with refunds for overpayments. Pay any tax bills on time, as reviews do not delay due dates.

If you lack access to a fax machine, services like FaxZero allow sending faxes for free to U.S. numbers. To use FaxZero, visit faxzero.com and follow these steps: Enter your sender information (name, company, email, phone), receiver details (name, company, fax number), and fax content (up to 3 pages plus a cover, in DOC, DOCX, or PDF format, or typed text). Complete the confirmation code and submit.

To strengthen your request, gather comparable sales ("comps") from real estate websites like Zillow, Redfin, or Realtor.com. Search for properties in your area with similar size, age, condition, and features. If necessary, adjust for differences (e.g., extra bedrooms or renovations) to estimate your home's fair market value. Consider including screenshots or listings in your submission, but I didn’t. Remember that the comps must be sales from before March 31, 2025. You can however use later comps to ask for a review of next year’s assessment.

Filing a Formal Appeal

In my case, I faxed the completed form and received a phone call from the Assessor’s office the following day approving my proposed value. As a result, I expect to save $670 on my 2025-26 property tax. But your results may vary.

If the informal review doesn't resolve the issue, you can file a formal appeal with the Assessment Appeals Board (AAB), an independent body. Grounds include disagreement over market value, whether a change in ownership triggered a reassessment, or other valuation errors. You can obtain an Application for Changed Assessment from this web page. State your opinion of value and reasons for disputing the Assessor's figure. The filing window closes November 30 annually, or within 60 days of a supplemental assessment notice. You'll receive a hearing notice at least 45 days in advance. At the hearing, present evidence like comps, cost estimates, or income data for rental properties.

Disclaimers

At CoCoTax, we are not realtors, investment advisors, or practicing attorneys. This information is for reference purposes only. Contact a professional if you need help following these steps or have questions.

The Fight for Suburbia

Our October event is well timed as it follows closely on the heels of Governor Newsom signing SB 79, a bill that requires local governments to approve apartment buildings within a one-half mile radius of train stations ( “bus rapid transit” stations also count, but we do not have any in Contra Costa County).

At the last minute, legislators revised SB 79 to at least temporarily exempt Contra Costa County. They added language stating that the measure only applies to counties that have more than 15 train stations. We have precisely 15, so the law will not apply to us unless and until another train station is added. A new Amtrak station is being planned for Hercules, but no completion date has been announced.

Our speaker on Friday, October 24^th, Steven Greenhut, has written a short book entitled “Is There a War on Suburbia?” Legislative initiatives to override local zoning in favor of transit oriented development make it feel like such a war is underway. As Steven writes:

At first glance, it’s hard to imagine government is waging a war on the lifestyle choice of 69% of the population. Yet the Independent Women’s Forum argued that the Biden administration’s fair-housing plan “is a radical plan that would crush the ability of American citizens to choose what kind of community in which to live.” The article is unsurprisingly called, “Joe Biden’s War on Suburbia.” One can find myriad articles that tout this theme, with the “war on suburbia” a common title.

According to that conservative women’s group, the Biden plan used the concept of racial fairness to attack “local zoning laws, designed by local representatives, to create or preserve a town’s density, leafiness, school quality and nature and location of commercial strips.” …

The real debate is about zoning, government regulations, subsidies and the quality of urban governance. Those issues are interrelated but different. There is in fact a concerted effort by progressives – based on an urbanist ideology that believes that car-centric living situations are environmentally unsustainable and destructive of our sense of community – to densify the suburbs. Some of their ideas, such as loosening zoning laws to allow higher-density construction, are perfectly consistent with free-market thinking. Others, such as subsidizing low-income housing projects and limiting single-family-home permits, are not.

In opposition to these policies, many conservatives (and some liberals in pricey growth-controlled areas such as Marin County, California, north of San Francisco) 12 argue that local governments are closest to the people and should have the power to determine local zoning and density rules and not be pre-empted by state and federal governments. State and federal subsidies for affordable-housing projects distort the marketplace and waste taxpayer dollars and the best way to solve the state’s housing problems is by lowering taxes and regulations.

Please join us next Friday at Denny’s in Concord to hear Greenhut’s nuanced perspective. For more information and to sign up click here.