What do you do? Monthly Mailers of Overassessed Homes Sold Last Month in Nassau and Suffolk Counties. It's the last day of April. Later today or tomorrow databases detailing the real estate sold in Nassau and Suffolk Counties during April will arrive via modem. Then, with a cool Jazz CD cued up for boredom control, we're off to produce mailers that will be in our clients' hands before their competitors have had time to change the calendar to May. This mailer, which is sold to clients in the assessment reduction business, is another example of custom software produced by the Installations Plus+ division of SERVENET.COM.
To make the mailer, we discard sales of vacant land and non-residential properties, and of properties priced so low that the commission on an assessment reduction wouldn't pay for a haircut. Then we correlate the sales data with assessment data from the tax rolls to find over-assessed properties -- properties which are assessed as if they would sell for much more than they did. Along the way we collect as much information about each property as possible: home style, square footage, acreage, number of rooms, other features, and property tax.
Before we correct the property addresses and add ten-digit zip codes using U.S.P.S. data, we remove homes not owner-occupied (they don't qualify for assessment reduction) and those where the sale price appears spurious (much too low) and/or where the sale wasn't an arms length transaction. And of course we remove duplicates. Now we're ready to load the data into the individual mailers for each client. The main page of the software for Property Tax & Escrow Services is shown at right. Click on it to view it full-screen.
This client likes to review the properties when time permits (hence the Yes and No buttons) and prefers to mail in batches (hence the batch control panel). He sends the targeted homeowners -- differentiated by county -- a custom flyer, a contract, and a designation of representative form, all of which are personalized and printed with the mailing software along with envelopes or labels, as needed. The updated mailer, which is typically ready one or two days after the sales data arrive, is transferred and installed on the client's system using a pcANYWHERE remote control session. With a little luck, my client starts signing up overassessed homeowners targeted by the mailer four or five days into the new month!
And with a little luck you'll enjoy "a rainy day in the neighborhood" with me on the next page.
