Facie’s Ramblings

Yesterday, I sent out my third thank-you note for my thank-you note project . This one went to a woman I met four and a half years ago when our daughters attended the same preschool and then the same kindergarten (they were in the same place, the same room, actually). I really like R; she is younger than me, though we have the same birthday, and she seems to be a good, loving, caring mom to her three kids. She seems sincere, and she is not one of those gossipy women. We have managed to stay in touch over the years, though because of her work schedule and large (to me, anyway) family, we don't get together too often, which is a shame because Jordan really likes her daughter, who is sweet and quiet, just the kind of friend you want your kid to have. I decided to send R a note because, as a real estate agent, she has been sending me housing information to help me fight my assessment case. As I ranted about a few weeks ago , our assessment went up even though we live in an area where...

I am certain I have never used the word "crap" in blog post title, but crap is pretty much what I consider the Allegheny County reassessment mess. This is a long post, but I have to get it out. When we bought our house in 2002, we paid $87,000 for it. At the time, it was assessed for $92,300. I clearly remember the settlement agent telling us we should appeal to get it down to $87,000. I decided not to bother since I had hoped to sell our house within three to five years and wanted to get more than what we paid for it. We tried unsuccessfully to sell our house back in 2007 and 2008. At that time, the only offer we had was too low. But looking back, we probably should have taken it, because I am very confident that today, we would not get that 90k for our house. Not only is the market bad, but we live in an area where home values have been on the decline. We live on a cul-de-sac, but on the street we use to get to ours, out of about 15 houses that sold over the past thre...