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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Amy J who wrote (18385)	3/10/2004 7:56:59 AM
From: Wyätt Gwyön	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

was told planes fly overhead for aerial photos once a year to seek out remodeled homes for tax collection p how can they tell--by looking at the roof? all they can pull off an aerial is the roof plan. there has been a lifting of military restrictions on relatively high-res satellite photos for commercial use. these have good enough res to pick up floorplan additions which change the bird's-eye view, along with pools and such, but they ain't going to pick up the new granite countertop or the jacuzzi bathtub. i think some tax districts use the satellites. one thing i am wondering is how the satellite TV companies monitor for piracy. i am guessing they look for dishes on unregistered houses. maybe this is one reason why Dish and DirecTV want to merge--so they can share their databases. perhaps the satellite resolution is now good enough to pick up the dishes--probably 6" to 1' res--or maybe they just drive around neighborhoods with binoculars. i just read that OJ got sued over this.

To: Amy J who wrote (18385)	3/10/2004 10:22:51 AM
From: Tradelite	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 306849

I don't know about satellite monitoring, but it seems my county tax assessor does a poor job of keeping up with home improvements, despite a perfect mechanism for discovering them via the county permit process. Tax records reveal that the assessor still thinks I have oil heat instead of natural gas, and a septic system instead of public sewer--changes made many years ago. And he sure doesn't know about the remodeled kitchen, but that's a small matter. The assessor's office should automatically know about and factor in major improvements because permits were obtained from the county authorities each time major work was done. I'd say 75 percent of the homes I used to list for sale had similarly inaccurate tax records. It wasn't unusual to run into people who had either done their own Harry Homeowner-type electrical, plumbing and construction work or had hired Joe-in-a-pickup truck to do them without permits. This potentially creates a big insurance problem if a fire or other problem breaks out and it turns out the work wasn't up to code. Meanwhile, I'm wondering what's going on with the vacant house near mine, where the entire yard was excavated, and the entire back of the brick house was torn completely off several months ago. Plastic sheeting has been covering the back of the house for months, and work seems to have stopped. Maybe a legal dispute erupted between the owner and contractor. Hope the owner is smart enough to get county permits for the work, or he'll have more problems than just an unfinished renovation job.