when property taxes kills the deal

[Phil C.]

Hi all, I was looking at a $80k house that's in OK shape except for a hole in the one of the ceiling and an odd small patch of mold in a damp spot in the basement stairwell, not a from a leaky pipe in a ceiling. Likely from damp moist air and poor circulation.

But I digress, the max I would pay and think it's worth is 70k. Which would cash flow a nice $1,400 or $480-500 net, but then I realized the taxes were triple what I estimated, instead of 2k it was over 6k! In my eyes that's nearly 10%.

So instead of cash flowing a comfy $500 I'd cashflow maybe 100, too risky for my blood.  anything going wrong could put me in the red...How sad is that?  My agent didn't say anything about a reassessing the taxes and that that's good much the neighborhood goes for. That just sounds astronomically disproportionate.

Anyone else have a nice deal killed by prop taxes?

[Ethan Giller]

Primos, it looks like that is a neighborhood in Upper Darby, which is outside of Philadelphia?  That's probably the issue here.  Any advice you ask for with regards to Philadelphia taxes is not going to apply if the property is outside of the city - different jurisdiction, different tax setup, different valuations.