By Saturday at the latest, every home owner will receive the WOZ value of the house. That value affects the taxes you have to pay. This raises the question every year, is this amount correct? According to the Vastelastenbond from Eindhoven, home owners trust the municipality that sets prices less and less. This is what you can do if you want to object.
First let’s get the facts straight. Municipalities must announce the WOZ value in the first eight weeks of the year. The deadline is Sunday, February 25. WOZ stands for Real Estate Value. This not only concerns houses but also commercial properties or garages. To determine the value of your property, the municipality compares it with comparable buildings sold in the area. Year of construction, surface area and energy consumption also play a role. The date is always set one year earlier on January 1.
When paying taxes, the value of your assets is taken into account. This includes income tax, municipal levies and water board tax. A lower WOZ value can save you hundreds of euros every year. Home owners with a high income in particular notice this in their taxes.
Check yourself
Anyone who receives a WOZ value can view the valuation report online by logging in MijnOverheid.nl. The appraisal report includes, among other things, the characteristics of the home and the value of homes sold in the area. Through WOZ-waardeloket.nl you can view the value of your home and other properties for free and compare them based on characteristics.
Whether the municipality estimates that WOZ value correctly is checked by the Valuation Chamber. This looks at how the municipality determines the value and what data is used for this. Municipalities that receive a relatively large number of objections are closely monitored by the Valuation Chamber.
To object
If you do not agree with the value that the municipality assigns to your house, you can object. You can do this yourself via the municipality’s website where you can find an objection form to fill out.
There are also special agencies that object to the WOZ value for citizens. These cost the municipalities a lot of money, because they have to pay the legal costs if the objection to the WOZ value turns out to be justified. And that costs hundreds of euros each time. Money was earned at the expense of citizens, the government thought, because they also had to fill in the objection form themselves at such an agency. The compensation for such agencies has therefore now been reduced.
Dirk-Jan Wolfert of the consumer organization Vastelastenbond has mixed feelings about this. More and more of those ‘objection agencies’ are disappearing and he thinks that is a bad thing. In the meantime, the fact that municipalities had to pay so much has also ensured that they pay more and more attention when valuing houses, he thinks.
And if you think objecting is too much of a hassle: according to the Vastelastenbond, the vast majority of WOZ values are good. “That’s 80 to 75 percent,” says Wolfert.
And too high a valuation can also have an advantage. “Anyone who buys a house with a WOZ value that is too high can sometimes find it easier to get a mortgage or a discount on the interest rate,” Wolfert explains. “Because the bank then estimates the financial risk to be smaller.”