On the offchance that you haven't heard of the latest real estate scam related to declining property values, be on notice that residents throughout Santa Clara County are receiving invoices from an agency that appears to help homeowners get their property taxes lowered - for an outrageous fee.

The scam notices come from "Property Tax Reassessment" in Los Angeles and it claims that your property values have delined to far lower than your assessed value. We have lived in our Belwood of Los Gatos home for about 9.5 years, so our assessed value is far lower than market value (even today), but this document claimed that our property should be reassessed at about 20% lower still.  My response to Jim, my husband, was "Thank goodness their proposed value is wrong". In fact, it's off in our case by about half.

Please, if you get this nonsense in your mail, just shred it.

You can check comps for your home online very easily and at NO cost at Zillow.com, Cyberhomes.com or on my Real Estate Report under the Property Analysis tab.