Second, you can dispute your current tax assessed value with your county. If you haven't been mailed a new tax value in the last year or so, this is crucial since it's likely that your tax assessed value is not reflecting your home's current market value! In some cases, the local municipalities have raised the millage rate (Millage is the tax rate used to calculate your ad valorem taxes) to offset the slew of homeowners successfully lowering their tax assessed value by tens of thousands of dollars.
Third, contact your mortgage company and see if they collected more for property taxes than they paid out with the mortgage payments you made. Most mortgage payments have escrows which divide your tax/insurance bills over 12 months and pay them annually so you don't have to come up with a chunk of money when the bill is due. The problem is that if your insurance premium or tax bill goes down, your mortgage payment remains the same and now there is extra money being collected! When you contact your mortgage company and discover an overage, they'll give you an option to mail you the difference or apply to the next year's taxes--I'll let you decide what to do with that. This will also in turn lower your overall mortgage payment since the previous year's payment is based on collecting more in escrows.
Notice I did not recommend a loan modification. That is a new blog all by itself! Loan modifications have become THE most frustrating and sometimes demeaning processes next to doing a short sale on your own. Don't attempt a loan modification on your own use a third-party housing counselor (NACA is my favorite). Only used HUD approved housing counselors and NEVER pay anyone to do a loan modification for you.
