px_eliezer_ Property values may sometimes fall, but property taxes never do.
See: Decline-in-Value. In the mid 1990s when values crashed I filed one of these and got a reduction in my taxes. It was also at the same time I got my divorce, so when I took the house in the settlement the value of the equity in the house that was assigned to me was valued at a mere $25,000.
California’s Proposition 13 established the base year value for property tax assessment. It also caps the growth of a property’s assessed value at no more than two percent a year unless the market value of a property falls below the base year value.
In 1978, California voters passed Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment that allows a temporary reduction in assessed value when a property suffers a “Decline-in-Value.” A Decline-in-Value occurs when the current market value of your property is less than the current assessed value as of January 1.