Receiving my new assessment last week -- which you read about here -- has me thinking about home values and what our little spot on the map is worth.
Actually, I'm thinking more about how one gets a real idea of what that spot is worth. It's a theoretical discussion, I know, and one that's hypothetical because I'm not planning on selling at the moment.
But I decided to look up some former residences on Zillow.com and compare the values there with the assessments on the City of Milwaukee Web site. The differences were striking.
For example, in 1924 my great-grandfather bought a 24-year-old home on the southwestern edge of Walker's Point and raised my grandfather there. He, in turn, raised my mother there and my cousin spent much of his youth there and I lived there for seven years, too. No denying, we got a lot of use out of that place.
When it came time to sell, values weren't high. So, I wasn't surprised to see it is currently assessed at $55,000 by the city. But I was a little surprised that Zillow took that assessment, presumably, and sales data and came up with a value of $99,000 instead. Nearly double! And at a time when the market is down.
If this is the kind of conflicting information out there, it's no wonder the world of real estate is in its current condition. Well, that and the mortgage crisis, of course.
I also noted that although my childhood home in Brooklyn is assessed at more than triple the value of my current home, the property taxes on both were about the same in 2007. But that's another blog.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
