My first challenge was made since i didn't think that the real estate commission and other items (taxes, inspections and ect) should be figured in on Fair Market value. Oklahoma Fair market value is what you wrote the check for. I didn't win my appeal but they told me if I had wrote two checks one for house and another one for the RS commission I would be correct. I don't know if you could negotiate that deal but will try the next time i buy a house...
I tried that strategy when we bought our current house 16 years ago. The taxable appraised value had been well below FMV for many years. Then, right after the sale, it increased significantly to almost exactly the price we paid. I appealed, arguing that $30K of the sales price was not for real property. It was for real estate agent services (commission) and for some personal property such as a spa, lawn tractor, and appliances that were included with the sale. They are only allowed to tax the value of real property.
In theory, they accepted the argument but then asked if I had a mortgage. I said yes and they asked to see a copy of the appraisal to see if it supported my argument about the FMV of the real property. Well... it didn't. So I told them I didn't have the appraisal and that, in any case, the best measure of FMV was the arms-length deal between buyer and seller, which in this case included items other than real property.
Without rejecting that argument, they simply did their own comp-based estimate that supported the gross sales price. They correctly surmised that we would not have been approved for the mortgage without an independent appraisal that supported the gross sales price, regardless of the value of personal property or the realtor commission.
I think the official paperwork could have easily been structured to exclude the personal property, which we could have paid for with a separate check. But I'm not so sure about realtor commission and possibly other closing costs. I'm not sure how that would work.