How Do Natural Disasters Affect Property Taxes?

There are certain parts of the world where natural disasters occur more often than others. The U.S. definitely has its fair share of earthquakes, hurricanes, and tornadoes etc. Owning real estate during these times can be devastating for certain property owners. Real estate of all types can be decimated by the devastation of catastrophic events, which can dramatically affect the communities in which they reside, since it can take years to recover from this type of destruction.

As many people know, real estate is also a source of revenue for municipalities, known as property taxes. There are a few issues that arise when disaster strikes in a given municipality:

1. When a taxpayer’s home is badly damaged by a natural disaster, the property tax bills still are mailed to the address to be paid by the set due date by the municipality.

2. If there a multiple homes damaged in a given neighborhood the municipality might increase the taxes of the remaining homes in the community to offset the tax revenue loss incurred by the catastrophe.

3. At some point a re-evaluation will have to occur to update the values of the homes that have been destroyed or damaged by the disaster that struck the municipality.

All these occurrences present a real challenge for municipalities to balance the budget for communities as property tax revenue is an important source of revenue that helps provide services for taxpayers that are necessary to live. The timeline for taxpayers’ assessment to be reduced based on the damages from a tragic event can vary; which can provide more opportunities for tax abatements to be filed.

Allobar Strategies, a property tax consulting firm, specializes in filing tax abatements on behalf of the taxpayer during such traumatic times. Allobar Strategies also has the ability to project what the tax liability will be in the future.

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