Property Tax information - hmmm
As reported in the online version of the Santa Fe New Mexican today (scroll down to ‘Property tax Web site improves’), the Santa Fe County has introduced a new service on their web site that allows you to look up appraisal and tax information online. Plug in a known street address and the system will return a heck of a lot of information for the property at that address. Not only do you get to know who the owner of the property is, you’ll also find out how big the lot is, what the value of the land is and what the value of the improvements are. I’m sure that’s all public information that you can get by going to the county offices. However I find it a bit daunting to make the search completely open. Say I want to burglarize a place here in town. I plug in all the street addresses on, let’s pick “Circle Drive” and pick the five ones with the highest value. Those are guaranteed to be interesting “targets”.
It’s also interesting that my new address is not listed in the system - guess that means that I don’t have to pay property taxes 
Off to check if Richardson is up-to-date on his property taxes …
If the Office of the County Assessor does not have your correct address you have the duty to inform the County Assessor of the correction, in writing for security purposes.
Remember the property tax is levied on the property not on the individual. If taxes become delinquent for more than three years the Property Tax Division of the Taxation and Revenue Department may sell it at auction to satisfy any taxes that are not paid including penalties and intrests.
My county of birth in Kansas and my current county in Nebraska both have a set-up like this, complete with photos taken during the most recent assessment period.
On one hand it is a bit creepy. On the other hand, the voyeur in me is FASCINATED.
In looking for a home to buy, there is sometimes better info on the county assessor’s site than in the realtor’s listing. (Which is a sad state of affairs for the realtor and home sellers.)
The weirdest thing was when I looked up the value of my family’s homes in Kansas. My emotional baggage led me to believe they were priceless. The county assessor had other ideas. It was a bit depressing.
And for the record - having the government officials responsible for collecting my taxes monitoring and posting to my blog is waaaaay creepeir than having my tax info available!
They are all cool, Chris. I had several email exchanges with them today and they are not out to put the thumb-screws on me. Really nice that they actually care and monitor blogs. I’m not worried at all (should I be?).
Hmmm… Kool-aid in the water there, Tobias?
…but it does look like your local officials are on top of things in this connected age!
[...] I posted an entry about some privacy concerns with the County’s new Property Tax lookup service. Turns out that [...]
Kidding!
I was actually pretty impressed that they were posting!