Due to budget cuts, the Petaluma Assessor's Office is now closed for customer service. If you have any assessment related questions, please call or visit the Sonoma County Assessor's office in Santa Rosa. We are open from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm Monday through Friday, except legal holidays. We are located at 585 Fiscal Drive, Room 104F, Santa Rosa CA 95403. We can be reached at (707) 565-1888.
Bill Rousseau, Sonoma County Chief Deputy Assessor, announced recently that property owners are once again receiving mail from a private firm offering to assist them with filing a Homeowner’s Exemption for a one-time processing fee ranging from $25.00 to $59.00. In their most recent mailing, this company is informing homeowners if they want the exemption they need to fill out and send them the forms. In addition, the letter indicates that the company will bill them for $25.00 processing fee for filing the form. Mr. Rousseau stated that Homeowner’s Exemption forms are available at the Assessor's Office and can be filed at no cost.
The Homeowner's Exemption allows a homeowner to exempt from taxation up to $7,000 of property value each year if they owned and occupied the property on January 1. This can result in a property tax savings of up to $70 per year. Once granted, the exemption remains in effect every year until such time that the property owner no longer qualifies. Property owners must apply for the exemption prior to February 15 to receive the full benefit for that year. In most cases, a claim form is automatically mailed to the property owner, but they may also request a Homeowner’s Exemption claim form from our public service counter or by calling the Assessor's Office at (707) 565-1888.
Mr. Rousseau indicated that any questions about this misleading solicitation or any other property tax exemptions be directed to the Assessor's Office at (707) 565-1888.
In an effort to provide more information to the public via the web, our office has placed the most recent Assessor's Parcel Maps in the "Search the Assessment Roll" section of our website. Once you locate the assessment data you are looking for, click on the "View Maps" link and the most recent assessor's parcel map should be available to download. Please note that the maps are TIFF images and while most computers can open this format, you may need to download an image viewer to open these files.
Note: If you have a "Pop Up Blocker" enabled on your Internet Browser please change it to allow this "Pop Up" to display.
All of our assessor parcel maps are for assessment purpose only. No liability is assumed for the accuracy of the data delineated herein. Please also note that the maps are updated every week, while the assessment roll data is as of roll close, which normally occurs in July of each year.
Due to a sharp decline in residential home values, our office has been working hard to meet the demand for reassessments. Despite over a 15% cut to our annual budget, our office reassessed for 2010-2011, over 45,000 properties due to the declining residential real estate market. In addition, we processed over 18,000 changes in ownership and new construction events that occurred during the 2009 calendar year.
If you purchased a property during 2010, your new assessed value will be reflected in a supplemental assessment notice. The supplemental notice will serve as the first verification of your new value. The 2010-2011 annual tax bill cannot be changed at this time because by law the value was set on 1/1/10. All taxes on the annual bill are due and payable.
Supplemental assessments triggered by a change in ownership will be based on the "Fair Market Value" of the property at the time of purchase and not necessarily the purchase price. Please see California R&T Code § 110(a), and Property Tax Rule 2 for more information on the "Market Value" concept. For more information please see the California Board of Equalization web site.
For Property Tax Impound Accounts: Please note that until a change in ownership or new construction event is enrolled, our office cannot and will not provide documentation or an opinion of the new value. Please do not ask our staff to verify or document a new value until it is has been processed by our office. The supplemental value notice can be used to verify the new value for your impound accounts.
The 2010-2011 tax bills are normally issued in October of 2010 and reflect the assessed values as of January 1, 2010. Again, any 2010-2011 events for new construction or change in ownership will be issued as supplemental assessments. For more information on supplementals, please visit our Terms and Concepts section.
The Clerk of the Assessment Appeals Board and our office are receiving telephone calls from taxpayers asking when their assessment appeals will be reviewed by the assessor or heard by the appeals board. Unfortunately, due to the large number of value decline requests and assessment appeal applications we are receiving, as well as diminishing resources in both offices, we cannot accurately estimate a date when any one appeal will be resolved.
All assessment appeal applications must be resolved or heard within two years of being filed. If you are concerned about a 2009-2010 appeal, we will try and get to them before they expire in 2011. We will do everything within our capacity to try and address all assessment appeals before the go beyond their statutory two year limit.
On February 20, 2009, the Governor signed Chapter 4, Statutes of 2009, immediately suspending the Senior Citizens' Property Tax Deferral Program. This legislation prohibits the filing of claims for property tax postponement and prohibits the Controller from accepting claims filed after February 20, 2009. As a result of the program suspension, the Controller will no longer accept claims for property tax postponement pending modification or repeal of this new law. However, the Controller's Office will continue processing claims postmarked prior to February 20, 2009. For the most current information on the PTP program please visit the web site of the California State Controller's Office.
By law, the assessed values on the 2010-2011 tax bills are based on market data available as of January 1, 2010. The Assessment Appeals Board can only consider comparable sales data from calendar year 2009 as well as January, February, and March of 2010 to review values for January 1, 2010.
For more information, please refer to our information on Property Value Decline Provisions. If you have additional questions, don't hesitate to contact us.
As of January 1, 2006, California's Revenue and Taxation Code Section 62 was amended to exclude transfers of real property between registered domestic partners from reassessment due to change in ownership. "Registered domestic partners" are two persons who have filed a Declaration of Domestic Partnership with the California Secretary of State pursuant to Family Code Section 297. To learn more about this exclusion, please visit the California Secretary of State's web site at: http://www.ss.ca.gov/dpregistry/index.htm. To review a list of typical transactions that might be affected by this exclusion, please download and read the following letter from the State Board of Equalization: http://www.boe.ca.gov/proptaxes/pdf/lta05062.pdf. If you have additional questions, please contact us.
The Recorder's Office and the Assessor's Office have had a combined customer service counter area since January 2004. Visit us and check out the public computers and many other combined services!
Assessment Roll information is available on this web site. Visit our section called Search the Assessment Roll to look up Assessment Roll information using any of the following criteria:
Please note that the Online Property Assessment Information System does not display the Assessee's name or address information for legal and privacy reasons.
We have been offering customer service to Petaluma and southern Sonoma County at our branch office in Petaluma since January 7, 2003. Our Petaluma office is located in the south wing of the Petaluma City Hall at 11 English Street, Room 25. The office is open for customer service every Tuesday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Appraisers are available to answer questions regarding assessed values and supplemental assessments. Parcel maps and property profiles with property characteristic information are available for sale. If you can't make it to our office on Tuesday's, please call (707) 769-9755 to make a private appointment.
Try our IVR system to obtain assessment information any time of the day or night! By entering a valid parcel number you will receive the parcel's assessed values by assessment category (land, improvements, personal property, exemptions, and the net assessed value). If you request a fax-back, the fax will list not only the assessed values by category, but also the assessee, the assessee's mailing address, the parcel's situs address, and the parcel's tax rate area (TRA) code. The IVR number is: (707) 565-3010.
Visit the Forms section of this web site to check out all of the forms you can download.
We are always interested in receiving your feedback and/or questions. You're invited to visit our office Monday through Friday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., or send me an email.
Janice Atkinson
Sonoma County Assessor
Some content available through the Search Roll is saved in an alternative format. To view these files, download the following free software.
Important Notice:
The staff of the Clerk-Recorder-Assessor's Office are forbidden by California legal codes to practice law or provide legal advice; this prohibition includes giving advice about what forms you might need or how you should fill them out.