Taxes

[Rosalind]

Quote:
Eh, in my experience it depends. The previous owners of my house bought it for $250k, did a bunch of extensive improvements, but then never had it re-assessed, and listed it at $450k. Since this is a teeny-tiny community, people (especially the assessment board) noticed, and wanted to know what was the deal, were they owed a pile of money? Moreover, the real estate agency had my financing through a mortgage broker (yes, the only honest one in the business,

) and so the assessment thing became an issue because they wanted to know, were back taxes owed on the property that could screw up the payments or sale terms, type of thing.

I think it would not have been an issue if it hadn't been such a big difference, but then we are also talking about getting re-assessed at the bottom of a market depression--selling at the top of the upswing might create a similar problem.

 

[Mac in Wisco]

It didn't make sense to me that government revenue would go down just because the real estate market is down, so I did a bit of reading.

Property taxes are not a fixed percentage of your property value. Your property value only determines your portion of the taxes as compared to the other property owners in your tax district. If your property is worth more you pay a higher portion of the revenue collected for the year. If the revenue for your tax district is to be $10,000 for the year and you own 1/10,000 of the property valuation in that district you owe $1. If your neighbor's property is assessed as twice the value of yours, his share is 1/5000th and he owes $2 As the price of services goes up, property taxes go up. If all of the property in the district falls in value by 5%, you still owe your 1/10,000th share and your tax doesn't go down as an effect.

 

[beak]

The Chinese are going to take care of us. Of course you might have to cut back to one kid. just kidding.

Doesn't matter what our houses are worth. The cost of maintaining the infrastructure doesn't go down. So there's no choice but to raise taxes and cut services. Sad but true. The government doesn't run on a profit basis. They just waste all our taxes overpaying government contractors.