

An almost perfect real-world hack - lbrandy
http://lbrandy.com/blog/2009/08/an-almost-perfect-hack/

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kalvin
Wow, one commenter built a business from the same idea (sorry to repost a
comment, but it's pretty great.):

"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."

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conorgil145
Just goes to show that if you make the extra effort a lot of the time things
will tend to work out. This guy was extremely prepared and didn't even need
the information that he gathered with an awesome day's worth of coding because
the lawyers thought he wouldn't even show up!

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.

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lbrandy
Here's an addendum to my story:

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).

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jacquesm
Your dad is absolutely right. I've been in court 4 times to date, all of those
business related. Each time we were prepared to the hilt. One party didn't
show, we won that one by default. The second had his case fall apart on the
first day because of our evidence. #3 and #4 (both in Germany) took a little
longer but we also won those.

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.

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edw519
Hernacki's law: I am willing to do whatever it takes to get what I want.

Hernacki's corrolary: You may not have to actually _do_ it, you just have to
be _willing_ to do it.

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GavinB
Don't forget to publicly _demonstrate_ your willingness.

The willingness just makes the demonstration more believable.

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huherto
"Eighty percent of success is showing up". ... Woody Allen;

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handelaar
In this case that's probably more important; what were the chances of the
thing being dropped if he hdan't turned up in person to contest it?

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eli
In Long Island, most people just hire a lawyer to contest their assessment.
There are law firms that do clever direct mail postcards with exactly how much
you can save, and the fee is a percent of your tax savings so you can't really
lose.

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euroclydon
I always viewed the tax value as a cheap and easy appraisal. That way, when I
go to sell the home, I can at least say: "I'm not selling for less than tax
value."

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.

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cema
What really amazes me is that people are amazed by this. Isn't it kind of
normal? Not to scrape the web (he only had to do that because the web site did
not present information in a useful manner), but to prepare for a court
hearing with facts and arguments?

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.

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oz
_a heavily lawyer-bound society_

'Litigious' is the word here.

And no, you're not the only one wondering who neurotypical people survive.

~~~
cema
I was not looking for a funny word. US is "lawyer-bound" the way a program is
either computation-bound or communication-bound depending on where it engages
more resources. IMHO, of course.

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ars
He worked too hard. The website has a button that gives you a list of
comparables.

Cool story though.

And I believe the alleghency county real estate tax system has recently been
ruled illegal.

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jwhitlark
Government fishing expeditions depress me. Great story, though.

If we could track change in assessed value over time, we could build up
evidence for abuse...

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krakensden
As an alternative to iMacros, Selenium will let you do the same thing- and you
can script it from Python [or Perl, or Java, etc].

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dan_the_welder
Awesome I've installed Imacros. Perhaps I'll go and get my assessment lowered
too.

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jpwagner
Great story!

