Giant increase of property tax. How do I avoid this?

Question

I went to buy a home for a rental and the taxes changed from $50/month to $300/month. For years it was always $50ish and even some of surrounding homes are still at this old rate. And some homes will have a random house in that area go up 3x-5x the taxes.

You buy it and run your numbers and then bam your renter is in there at a decent rent and now youre losing money because the taxes changed.

Have any of you dealt with this or how did you how would you handle it? Also, anyone buy a property like this and did the taxes drop afterward?

Anyway to predict or protect against this?

David Krulac · Answer

When you get a nw tax bill you should do the following:

1. Look for errors on the assessment record, we've building size 25% wrong, building removed before we owned still on tax records, errors in number of bed and baths, errors in condition, error of having an in ground pool, or a non existant garage.

2. If there is an error contact the assessment office, often the error can be resolved administratively.

3. Collect comps that are nearby and have sold in the last 6 months for less than your assessment/market value.

4. Appeal the assesmsent. One year we appealed 64 of our properties without getting either an appraiser or attorney and prevailed in 60 of 64 cases to lower our taxes.

Chris Seveney · Answer

I assume you owner occupied this and had some preferential tax treatment then when you moved and converted it to rental you lost that benefit

this is very easy to determine by reading a tax bill and calling your local tax office to understand the rates on property taxes

Steve Candor · Answer

No, this could be the case but here it was because this specific county has said in 5 months they are raising the assesment to current marketprices. So the county govt had given us anhigh property tax rate because the assessed value was low for decades. But now they said we keeping the high property tax rate but also increasing the assessed value to current market rates.

Most homes in the area got 4x-6x their tax bill come January 1. There is huge backlash in the community. Similar to what happened to Schuylkill county, PA earlier this this year. They wanted more money for their schools. Its ridiculous they can do this. Some people going from $50 to $250 a month or $100 to $500 a month.

Giant increase of property tax. How do I avoid this?

3 Replies