An almost perfect real-world hack
lbrandy.com
lbrandy.com
"I have been doing the same thing since 2001. Only I live in Cook County Illinois, the second most populated county behind Orange County, California.
So my database has upwards of 1,000,000+ properties in it (residential, commercial, and industrial).
Funny thing…I took the experiment one step further. I fed every single house in the county through the algorithm, to see who else had a similar appeal case.
Lo and behold, 65% of the county was being overassessed.
So I had two choices: 1) Class action lawsuit on behalf of the county 2) Mass mailing. Gimme $25, I give you the appeal info.
I chose two, and have been mopping up ever since. If you don’t win the appeal (all public record) you get a refund."
Nice work though. Hopefully all of the work he did will help someone else save some $$ too because he said that he posted the DB online.
I called my Dad, a lawyer, as I was walking out of the courthouse to brag that I was officially 1-0 in trial and planned on keeping it that way.
I told him that I was upset all my preparation went to waste. He said it wasn't wasted, as you've said. Basically, in these types of areas... they just try to win the cases against the unprepared, and don't even bother with the people who are prepared. He said you'd be amazed how often that simply showing up prepared is sufficient to win without a fight. (he wasn't talking about tax assessment stuff in particular, just in general low-end legal stuff).
For every one of those cases except for the 1st I'm pretty sure that it was our preparation that won the case, that plus the determination to see it through to the end. It helped that we were 'in the right' but that is definitely not always enough, you have to show that and you have to show it convincingly.
That makes no sense. His effort had no influence on how things worked out.
If you're sitting on the best possible hand in Texas Hold 'Em, and you get your opponent to fold without ever having to show your hand, your hand had influence on how things worked out. Presumably, you wouldn't have been as confident and aggressive with your hand if it wasn't good.
You could, of course, bluff, but that's a risk.
In general, I don't consider preparation wasted effort even if I don't need to call up the actual materials I prepared. If I was better at signaling preparation without actually doing so (read: bluffing), maybe that wouldn't be the case.
Yes - I might have gotten reward 100 by going into the situation with expected reward -12 .. but that would be a dumb thing to do.
That is the nature of acting intelligently under uncertainty - you assume things that might not be true (but probably are).
If you have the best possible hand in Texas Hold'Em, and your opponent folds - he's the one who made the right move, not you.
Hernacki's corrolary: You may not have to actually do it, you just have to be willing to do it.
The willingness just makes the demonstration more believable.
At pennies on the $100, I bet I'll make more from the sale by having a higher tax assessment, than I would save in annual taxes if i got it lowered.
I know I am being naive.
Well, anyway, it worked out for him well. Congratulations!
There is one thing I wonder about though. It may not be 100% relevant for HN, but it is relevant to the extent that we live in a heavily lawyer-bound society, to coin a phrase. Would it be possible for him, or more likely his lawyer, to press a case against the silly estimation done by the district, based on the figures he was able to extract? Not having experience in the matters of law, I have no idea what the answer may be.
'Litigious' is the word here.
And no, you're not the only one wondering who neurotypical people survive.
Pittsburgh local government? Corrupt, you say? Of course not.
Now get that silly lawsuit out of my courtroom.
Cool story though.
And I believe the alleghency county real estate tax system has recently been ruled illegal.
If we could track change in assessed value over time, we could build up evidence for abuse...