New Real Estate assessment

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  • #178867
    jrego
    Member

    Reading in today’s (22/09/2006) Tico Times page 12, it is stated that the government is preparing to reappraise all properties in Costa Rica. For those of you who don’t have access to the Tico Times, I will post the text here.

    By Blake Schmidt
    Tico Times Staff
    As the government prepares for a longoverdue
    nationwide assessment of property
    values, a lack of municipal resources
    promises to gum up the process, officials
    say.
    Municipal impotence, combined with a
    proposed law that would give the government
    power to fine property owners who
    declare values below their assessed value,
    have the real estate industry reeling.
    Municipalities assign very general values.
    They don’t go out to the properties to
    assess them & they valuate them from
    their desks, said Emilia Piza, president of
    the Costa Rican Chamber of Real Estate
    Agents.
    Marietta Montero, director of the
    Technical Norms Organ of the Finance
    Ministry, said municipalities not only lack
    human resources to go out and assess property
    values, but the information they rely on
    is riddled with errors. They base tax rates on
    that flawed information.
    They don’t have qualified engineers &
    and they bring in errors from the public registry.
    They are using legal information of a
    property instead of the physical information
    (to assess value) Montero told The Tico
    Times.
    Montero said that the Finance Ministry
    hopes to begin a new process of assessing
    property values as soon as November, a
    process that could be finished by the end of
    2007, she said, adding that approximately
    70% of properties in the country have not
    been appraised in nearly a decade.
    She explained the government is in the
    process of contracting a Canadian company
    for a $1.4 million project to assess the real
    estate market in Costa Rica. The company 
    which has yet to be named  will be responsible
    for general assessment in which it redefines
    pricing zones and establishes price values
    in those zones. Then, Montero
    explained, it will be up to the municipalities
    to send appraisers out to each property in
    those zones and do individual property
    assessments.
    But very few (municipalities) go out
    and do a good valuation, she said, adding
    that a law passed in 1997 put the responsibility
    of individual assessments in the hands
    of municipalities.
    Vladimir Pérez, civil engineer for the
    Municipality of Golfito in southwest Costa
    Rica, said the municipality has barely
    assessed a third of the properties in the canton.
    We need to have the resources required
    to do the job, he said. Nearly a quarter of all
    municipalities, including Golfito, don’t even
    have an office of property valuation as
    required by the law.
    Every five years, property owners are
    expected to declare the value of their property.
    However, municipalities have the power
    to conduct an expert appraisal and levy property taxes based on that result.
    The current property tax is 0.25%
    (¢2,500) per million colones per year (25
    cents per $100).
    A proposal in Congress, which is part of the Arias administration’s nine-part fiscal
    reform plan, will tax luxury properties valued
    at more than ¢100 million ($193,000),
    with a 0.25% additional annual tax on the
    value exceeding ¢100 million. The revenue
    would be put toward eliminating Costa
    Rica’s sprawling shantytowns.
    Under the new tax proposal, the
    Finance Ministry would also be given the
    power to fine property owners who declare
    values below the assessed values, a measure
    that has enraged many real estate owners.
    The whole world will try to get a lower
    value on their house, said property owner
    Arturo Lizano, who is also the former president
    of the Union of Private-Sector Chambers
    and Associations (UCCAEP), which
    represents 41 private business chambers.
    Lizano called the luxury tax a slap in
    the face to the middle class, adding that
    with skyrocketing real estate prices, ¢100
    million is no longer a luxury home. In a
    few years, it will just be a middle-class
    home, he said.
    Montero said property owners have the
    right to challenge the assessed value assigned
    to their property.
    She said a property owner can complain
    at the municipal level with the municipal
    office of valuations or to the Municipal
    Council.
    At the national level, she said property
    owners can complain before the Administrative
    Fiscal Court or the Contentious
    Administrative Court.

    #178868
    btanabe
    Member

    Can someone explain to me how Mr.Randall Zamorra (latest newsletter of WLCR) arrived to the conclusion that .25%(new tax rate) of the difference between a house valued at $225,000 minus $193,000(exemption) is $800.00 and that a $20,000 swimming pool added to the same property would increase the tax liability to $1,300 or an additional $500/year?
    According to my calculations the tax liability should be $80.00 if the property is exempted of the first $193,000 (225,000 – 193,000 x .0025 = $80.00). Even if no exemption was taken into consideration the tax liability for a $225,000 residence at a .25% rate should be $562.50/year

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