Property Tax Consutling & Outsourcing Services
Outsourcing is a strategic cost savings opportunity for non-core activities which requires flawless execution. Hilco’s
Property Tax Consulting & Outsourcing practice provides a broad range of experience in this field enabling your
company to focus on its core activities by allowing us to devote 100% of our time to this time consuming function.
Hilco is the world’s authority on maximizing value for our clients and is proud of the reputation we have earned in the
property tax consulting field. We have assembled and manage a premier group of national real estate property tax
consulting specialists in the resolution of all types of real estate appeal matters.
The objective of our group is to become our client’s Real Estate Property Tax Department, a single-source solution
to handle ALL management and administrative functions freeing up valuable resources of in-house personnel.
Hilco Property Tax Success Story
The subject property was a retail community center in which we appealed tax years 2008-2011. The center was
approximately 17,000 square feet within 3 detached multi-tenant buildings and situated on a 22-acre site. Additionally,
there was a large tax exempt community center, 4 detached restaurants (3 fast food and 1 full service restaurant)
and about a 4.5 acre vacant tract. The community center improvements were on a land lease and also encroached
on the adjoining parcel.
The original assessment was $4.2mm and the real estate taxes were roughly $4.94 per square foot. The center was
52% vacant and had limited front parking for the 3 retail buildings with ample rear parking. We identified a number
of inconsistencies in the assessment: the community center improvement exemptions were assessed and taxed, the
restaurant was recently renovated and the value was incorrectly increased with additional square footage and the
3 fast food restaurants all had different base values. We filed for a correction of error to have the community center
improvements removed off the roll. Based on our valuation modeling, we achieved a revised assessment of $1.6mm
or a 62% decrease. The net tax savings benefit for all 4 years appealed was approximetly $315,000. We also filed
for a re-plat removing the excess land from the improved retail parcel further diminishing the reimbursable expense.
| Initial Value: $4.2mm | Final Value: $1.6mm | Tax Savings: $315,000 |
Approach
- We quantify through unique modeling to illustrate and dismantle the assessor’s pre-determined assumptions.
- We meet with our clients to fully understand their financials, their assets and any other variables to develop
actual vs. pro-forma analysis through industry resources to justify our approach. We then apply capitalization
rates extracted from sales and/or investor surveys.
- Our relationship with the taxing authority is essential to our success and beneficial outcome. We are active in
various state assessor associations and property tax trade groups.
- We are one of the few property tax consulting and outsourcing practices that have MAI designated appraisers
on staff, which enable us to utilze this resource in developing unique modeling for positive outcomes.