Easy tax fix says new service saves homeowners $1,800 in just five minutes.(TECHNOLOGY)

An Appealing Site: One in four San Diego homeowners could be overpaying on property taxes because their homes have significantly decreased in value, according to a local entrepreneur who co-launched a Web site that simplifies the appeals process to lower assessed values on homes.

The county assessor's office has a free program that requires homeowners to fill out an appeal form and document their claim with three comparable homes nearby that sold recently. Enterprising individuals can pull the comparables themselves at the assessor's office downtown. For those who don't want to make the trip, Adam Berkson says his Web site, called EasyTaxFix.com, does the work for homeowners for $29.99.

Berkson, who lives at Liberty Station in Point Loma, says he developed the service with his brother, Jeff, after trying to do it manually. There are also services out there offered by real estate agents that cost about $100 or a percentage of the tax savings.

Berkson, who runs an information technology analytics consulting business, says the Multiple Listing Service doesn't always provide info on foreclosures and short sales in a neighborhood. So he went to the county recorder's office and had all of the sales information downloaded onto a database.

Customers can enter an address, and the Web site provides a list of several comparable home sales. Customers pick three from the list and receive an adjustment of their home's valuation. The site pumps out two forms to sign and provides the address where they can be mailed.

"I decided if I could get county data and put it in a database, I could provide it as a service," he said. "What should take five minutes is going to save about $1,800 in taxes."

There's no guarantee that the assessor will agree. But Berkson says the county has an interest in resolving these cases and avoiding an appeal hearing.

"The county is getting thousands of (appeals). And there are about 150 assessors," he said. "They're getting backlogged with these things."

He says he launched the service from his hometown because San Diego is being hit with one of the biggest market declines in the country. He also plans to launch a service for Riverside and Los Angeles counties Nov. 1.

Berkson says Easy Tax Fix has signed up about 100 customers and is targeting about 10,000 specific addresses of homes that have declined in value.

"There are a million properties in San Diego alone. When I say one in four properties is overvalued, that's potentially 250,000 properties," he said. "When the county assessor tells me that only 15,000 homeowners have filed appeals, that's a lot of people that aren't filing appeals."

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