State certified real property appraiser for a neighboring county here…
The remodel yet complete teardown/gutted ploy may work with the building department, but doesn’t work against the county assessors office. And no, leaving one wall up does NOT keep us from treating a remodel as new construction. We can do any percentage of new construction versus remodel. 90% new 10% old? Fine, we’ll add 90% of the new home construction as what we call “equivalent to new construction.”
And new construction assessment in the Bay area is going to be high.
We see tricks like this all the time
