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Los Angeles Property Value decline
Aug 25th
If you’re a homeowner in Los Angeles County you’re not only concerned about market value of your home, but you’re probably just as concerned with your taxable value as well. Guess what? You’re not alone. I’m here to write about what the The Los Angeles County Assessors Office is doing to help during this economic crisis and the people preying on unknowing victims of the real estate market.
First and foremost the Assessor Rick Auerbach announced early in the year that the Los Angeles County Assessors Office would do a proactive review of single family homes and condos purchased between July 1, 2004 and June 30, 2007 who were most affected by the recent decline of the market.
Since this news release, several individuals have decided to start a “side business” by soliciting this same group of people. What they are doing is charging homeowners for something that can be done for free by anyone by downloading the form from the Assessors website or by calling for more details. They are completing the FREE form offered by the Assessors office and providing comparable sales for anyone who signs and returns the form with a nominal fee of $95 plus. On some of these forms when the homeowner signs they are agreeing for this company to bill them the same fee annually for these services for the next 3 years. Other companies are charging a % of the tax savings which could be upwards of $500. In other instances these newfound companies have offered to appeal your values with the Assessment Appeals Board for $900-$1200, which can also be done for free by filing an application with the Assessment Appeals Board.
These companies are offering a money back guarantee if the application they submit receives no reduction, but the sad part is a lot of these people will be taken advantage of. All of the people that were part of the proactive review got their first review complimentary instead of being required to apply. Those with reductions from the proactive review then pays one of these agents to submit an application after they got a reduction already from the Assessors proactive review.
So, will these companies refund the money to the homeowner because the reduction given was based on a free review by the Assessors office and not because of the application? My guess is probably not. And what about the people that did get a reduction and signed up for 3 years or more of this service? Once you qualify for proposition 8 you are automatically reviewed by the Assessors office free of charge to determine if your values should change each year until it’s restored.
If you or someone you know thinks they may be due a refund by one of these private companies, you should contact the Assessors office to determine if the 2008 Assessed value decrease was because of the Assessors Proactive review, and application submitted by you, OR because of an application submitted by a third party company. You may also try to get a hold of the company that was paid to provide the service as well as Consumer Affairs and possibly the Better Business Bureau.
How Proposition 8 works: The state of California adopted this proposition in 1978. It states that if any year your current assessed value is greater than the market value you may qualify for a temporary reduction while the market is down. You apply for this reduction and once you qualify your value is reviewed annually against two factors: your Proposition 13 value (purchase price or base year value plus 2% compounded annually) and the market value as of January 1st of that year. If your the market value declines you receive and additional reduction, if it increases you receive an increase, but no greater than YOUR proposition 13 value.
Weather or not you find yourself affected by any of this, it is truly sad to see the people that feed off others in a time of need instead of coming together when it’s needed most. Just some insider insight during a trying time and a helping hand to help save uniformed people a little $ and unneeded frustration.
Los Angeles County Decline in Value Proposition 8, 2008 and new get rich quick schemes
Oct 9th
If you’re a homeowner in Los Angeles County you’re not only concerned about market value of your home, but you’re probably just as concerned with your taxable value as well. Guess what? You’re not alone. I’m here to write about what the The Los Angeles County Assessors Office is doing to help during this economic crisis and the people preying on unknowing victims of the real estate market.
First and foremost the Assessor Rick Auerbach announced early in the year that the Los Angeles County Assessors Office would do a proactive review of single family homes and condos purchased between July 1, 2004 and June 30, 2007 who were most affected by the recent decline of the market.
Since this news release, several individuals have decided to start a “side business” by soliciting this same group of people. What they are doing is charging homeowners for something that can be done for free by anyone by downloading the form from the Assessors website or by calling for more details. They are completing the FREE form offered by the Assessors office and providing comparable sales for anyone who signs and returns the form with a nominal fee of $95 plus. On some of these forms when the homeowner signs they are agreeing for this company to bill them the same fee annually for these services for the next 3 years. Other companies are charging a % of the tax savings which could be upwards of $500. In other instances these newfound companies have offered to appeal your values with the Assessment Appeals Board for $900-$1200, which can also be done for free by filing an application with the Assessment Appeals Board.
These companies are offering a money back guarantee if the application they submit receives no reduction, but the sad part is a lot of these people will be taken advantage of. All of the people that were part of the proactive review got their first review complimentary instead of being required to apply. Those with reductions from the proactive review then pays one of these agents to submit an application after they got a reduction already from the Assessors proactive review.
So, will these companies refund the money to the homeowner because the reduction given was based on a free review by the Assessors office and not because of the application? My guess is probably not. And what about the people that did get a reduction and signed up for 3 years or more of this service? Once you qualify for proposition 8 you are automatically reviewed by the Assessors office free of charge to determine if your values should change each year until it’s restored.
If you or someone you know thinks they may be due a refund by one of these private companies, you should contact the Assessors office to determine if the 2008 Assessed value decrease was because of the Assessors Proactive review, and application submitted by you, OR because of an application submitted by a third party company. You may also try to get a hold of the company that was paid to provide the service as well as Consumer Affairs and possibly the Better Business Bureau.
How Proposition 8 works: The state of California adopted this proposition in 1978. It states that if any year your current assessed value is greater than the market value you may qualify for a temporary reduction while the market is down. You apply for this reduction and once you qualify your value is reviewed annually against two factors: your Proposition 13 value (purchase price or base year value plus 2% compounded annually) and the market value as of January 1st of that year. If your the market value declines you receive and additional reduction, if it increases you receive an increase, but no greater than YOUR proposition 13 value.
Weather or not you find yourself affected by any of this, it is truly sad to see the people that feed off others in a time of need instead of coming together when it’s needed most. Just some insider insight during a trying time and a helping hand to help save uniformed people a little $ and unneeded frustration.
Free virus and spyware removal tools
Mar 6th
Are you a victim of spy ware? Have a virus? Have no fear! Many people think that when their computer starts running slow or they have different kind of “malfunctions” they need to buy a new computer. That’s usually not the case. As a matter of fact your problem could be a virus or spy ware and you, the technologically challenged, may be able to fix it yourself FOR FREE. There are free spy ware and virus removal tools available, but you need to be careful when choosing which one to use since some advertise themselves as a spy ware removal tools and are actually spy ware.
Most people know that it’s always good to have some sort of anti virus running on their computers along with a firewall to help ward off the evil spirits of spy ware and viruses, but today programmers are so on top of their game they make it extremely difficult to remove them.
PC WORLD Magazine, a really great magazine that even non-computer geeks can appreciate, wrote an article giving the simple steps anyone can follow to resuscitate their PC’s from viruses or spy ware. You can read the article here.
Food for thought-With all the viruses and spy ware out there are all their creators just malicious with nothing better to do? OR are Symantec, McAfee, Microsoft, and other big names, in on the scheme and paying the spy ware programmers to continue making them to generate more revenue for the above mentioned big names to find “patches” and other “new and improved” “top of the line” security programs they can charge you for?
ITT Technical Institute Financial Aid
Jan 11th
Financial Aid at ITT is a pretty fast process. You fill out a few papers they don’t explain to you and then when you start asking questions you get very brief answers and referred to “Sallie Mae”. Funny thing is when you contact Sallie Mae by email you get no response and when you call on the phone you get a rude customer service representative that tells you your school should have discussed all your questions and concerns with you and then they refer you back to your school. Pretty helpful huh?
Well it gets better! ITT Technical Institute of Sylmar, California put my financial paperwork in the mail last year instead of handing it to me in person. Well, for some reason their mail is delayed because I didn’t get that paperwork until the day my Cal Grant paperwork was supposed to be turned into the State of California. Yes, that’s right I got the papers at my house on the last day to have them in the office of the State of California for a Government Grant.
I went into the office and complained and she said sorry. She had no explanation as to why she waited until the last minute and robbed me of my chance for a Government Grant towards my tuition.
I wrote a letter and sent my paperwork in anyway telling them of the situation and as expected no response and no grant.
So here we are again, time to fill out the paperwork again. I was called out of class to be handed my paperwork this time and as I look at the paperwork they want all of my papers signed and returned with copies of W-2’s and more in 6 calendar days after receipt. Pretty timely huh?
Oh, just a little extra on their mailing punctuality; I got my Christmas card from ITT on January 4th wishing me a Merry Christmas. The date on the card was December 26th and the postmark was December 29th. Isn’t Christmas on December 25th?
ITT Technical Institute-Real Hands on experience
Jan 8th
ITT Technical Institute prides themselves on their “hands on training”. Well, I can’t speak for any of their campuses, but the one I’ve gone to. ITT Techical Institute in Sylmar, California has recently upgraded some of their labs with new equipment. Purchasing new PC’s is a start, but the Local Area Network (LAN) is impeckably slow and there are multiple instances of other hardware failures.
Funny story, 3 weeks ago I was in my Linux class. We were learning how to remote desktop with the command line in Linux. The entire class was having problems getting out to the internet using DHCP. We kept getting error messages and then Linux would reboot us and we’d have to start all over again just to end up in this vicious circle. We informed the teacher and he played with a couple of our PC’s and was just as stumped as the rest of us. Finally, one of the more advanced students said it’s got to be the router that we’re all connected to. He called in the campuses IT guy and they took our external drives to another lab. Sure enough, they were able to get out to the internet and remote admin into other external drives on the network.
Why is it that a student, someone who is paying thousands of $ in tuition knew what the problem was, but our teacher was clueless? Shouldn’t our teacher know these things and show us all how to fix them? Worst thing is because we didn’t figure out the problem until the end of the night most of us we never able to finish out labs completely so we don’t know if we did it right or wrong and because of the accelerated program we’re in…there will be no time to make it up.
Check back for more blunders of ITT Tech.
ITT Tech
Dec 14th
I graduated high school in 1997 and held a job that would fund my partying. I had no idea where I wanted to go with my future. Nothing sounded exciting enough. I finally decided to take a few courses of general education at a local college thinking I could knock my general ed out of the way and then figure out a major. I GOT BORED FAST! I got nervous because still after my hard work I didn’t have any clue which direction I wanted to go and thought that I may never know. So I continued working finding a decent paying full time job with benefits. After almost three years there I decided between the two things that interested me. Cooking and computers! Strange combo I know, but they are both very exciting to me. I checked into the culinary school and found out how expensive it was for a short term. In case you thought it was easy, it’s not. The course a 9 month program at a prestige school would run $27,000. That’s just for the Patisserie (baking) program. Sure I would be able to make some unimaginable wedding cakes and desserts, but I wanted the full deal. To continue another 6 months for the chef portion would cost an additional $27,000. Yes, you read right $54,000 for a 13 month program. Seeing as though I was a single mom I did not see anyway that even with financial aid I could afford this. Next stop, technical school…. I checked into a few local colleges and was finding out that I could accomplish the SAME thing through ITT Technical Institute or Devry as any of the jr. colleges or university’s, but in 1/3 of the time. I spoke to a counselor at ITT Tech and found that the prices were still high, but with student loans and financial aid I would probably be able to swing it. So I enrolled. My first quarter seemed pretty normal. I got my text books on time, classes began and ended as I was told before signing my life away, and it seemed like a typical school. I began to enjoy going back to school because I knew where I was going with my schooling and I knew I’d get the degree so many employers want to see now days. Classmates were nice, teachers were nice, and things seemed to flow as I had expected based off of what I was told by the recruiter. Little did I know that would all slowly begin to change…
Degree or not degree that is the question…
Nov 16th
Is a degree necessary in today’s career world? Throughout my childhood my parents occasionally mentioned the need for a degree, but without stressing a real importance. So, like many other teenagers, I just hung out with friends got the usual low paying dead end job and lived life. Until I finally realized, HEY! do you really want to be doing this for the rest of your life??? The answer was a resounding NO! So, I decided to figure out a way to be successful. I applied at several places that offered decent wages and benefits. Got turned down at all of them. I began to work at a company through a temp agency, but slowly began to relize that I needed to do something else because the “corporate ladder” had too many steps to climb from the bottom up. It was then I realized that I personally needed a degree. I took a few classes at the community college to get the ball rolling, but couldn’t decide what I wanted to major in. I finally narrowed it down to the two things I enjoy doing on a regular basis…computers or cooking. After learning how hard it was in the culinary industry and how pricey school was, I decided on the computer career. Still pricey for the school, but in high demand. Still the question remains, “why do we need a degree?” Why is it that a person who has learned their trade hands on for a good amount of time would be less desireable to an employer than someone fresh out of a trade school like ITT-Technical Institute or Devry? Is that a silent form of discrimination? Is this a plot for financial institutions and the government to get more $ in interest rates and student loans out of responsible citizens? Why should a person with 10 years hands on experience be excluded from a position because he is without a degree? It makes the University of Phoenix and other online colleges or “buy your degree online” businesses sound much better. Here’s a few links I found on the subject…what are your thoughts?
