While home foreclosures in Las Vegas have pulled down home values, they have not been able to pull down real estate taxes for homeowners, as shown in the record number of property owners filing tax complaints with the government center of Clark County, where Las Vegas is the county seat.
According to the Equalization Board of Clark County, it has received 8,300 residential and commercial tax appeals for the 2009 tax year, more than 6 times the number filed for the 2008 tax year.
In 2005, the state of Nevada has capped real estate tax increases, but the cap has not lessened the number of tax protests as the values of properties in the state, especially in Las Vegas, continue to fall. Many property owners are baffled by the fact that their taxes are still high when property foreclosures have pulled down the appraisal of their homes by more than 50 percent.
The Knights, who bought their three-bedroom house sitting on over half an acre in 2003 for around $180,000, considered moving to another state in 2007, a year their home was appraised at $350,000. They should have moved then because last year, their home appraisal has plunged to $177,000 and is still falling.
They are not alone as record numbers of home foreclosures in Las Vegas pulled two-thirds of homeowners in the area to underwater levels. According to SalesTraq, the zip code 89108, where the Knights are located, posted the second-highest number of foreclosures in metro Las Vegas in 2009.
The Knights have filed a tax protest with the board because they were assessed with a $1,500 property tax for 2009. They are complaining why their house was valued at $153,000 when a comparable neighboring but with an in-ground swimming pool was recently sold at only $132,000. With both of them unemployed, the $1,500 tax assessment is a heavy burden for the Knights.
While most other states are already starting to rise up from the housing crisis, record numbers of Nevada home foreclosures are still weighing down on the state. In January this year, it again topped the foreclosure charts and the jobless charts with a 13-percent unemployment rate.
Similarly, the pace of home foreclosures in Las Vegas put the metro area on top of metro foreclosure charts in January, with one foreclosure posting for every 82 residential units in the area. The Knights and other Las Vegas homeowners then may have to suffer more than high property taxes.