House property tax question

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FADEC

FADEC

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Hill Country TX
I was goofing off a few hours ago on the internet and was checking out zillow.com. It's basically a site where you can put in an address and it shows satellite views of homes/neighborhoods. It shows the house, when it was built, how much it sold for, property size, property taxes, etc.

I was looking at my house and a few of the neighbors. We all pay similar taxes, obviously based on house price and property size. Most are $2800- $3500 in yearly taxes.

Here is my tax

2012 $2,745 356% $311,900 2.5%
2011 $602 -- $304,400 335%
2010 $602 -23.8% $70,000 -45.1%

A neighbor directly accross from me has dramatically lower taxes
Here is his

2012 $18 -88.8% $363,700 2.3%
2011 $165 -70.5% $355,500 446%
2010 $560 -24.9% $65,100 -45.8%

This is odd as his house is worth quite a bit more than mine.

My question is how does he pay so little?? Is there some type of loophole I'm missing out on??
 
I'm guessing that his house is msot liekly signifigantly older than yours?? Just a guess. I've built 2 houses and have been living in the last one I built for 8 years now. When I was about completed and ready to get my C.O. I was planning on a filing a claim against my town as houses of similar value and lot sizer were much less in proeprty taxes charged. Only difference was their homes were 20+ years older than mine.

The Tax Collector grinned and told me to hold off 4 months because they had so many of these claims in the last 2 years that my whole county now goes off a much more accurate, yearly review and estimation of value.

Sure enough, the new system is much fairer...comp hoes are charged in the same manner.

Just guessing....let me know if I'm right!
 
Originally Posted By: BISCUT
I'm guessing that his house is msot liekly signifigantly older than yours?? Just a guess. I've built 2 houses and have been living in the last one I built for 8 years now. When I was about completed and ready to get my C.O. I was planning on a filing a claim against my town as houses of similar value and lot sizer were much less in proeprty taxes charged. Only difference was their homes were 20+ years older than mine.

The Tax Collector grinned and told me to hold off 4 months because they had so many of these claims in the last 2 years that my whole county now goes off a much more accurate, yearly review and estimation of value.

Sure enough, the new system is much fairer...comp hoes are charged in the same manner.

Just guessing....let me know if I'm right!

They were built within two months of each other in spring 2010.
 
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Your neighbor is just flying under the radar and hasn't been assessed recently OR Zillow has wrong data. Zillow is known for inaccurate or dated data.
 
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Usually Id say that he fought with the tax assessor and got a lower value because of claimed depression in the market...

But $18 vs $2745? Cripes.

I think it is a typo, or else there was some tax deferral for whatever reason.

But at $2745 I wouldnt complain, I pay 3x what you do.
 
I wouldn't necessarily take Zillow's tax data as gospel.

Every county (county treasurer) has a website where you should be able to look up real estate parcel info and associated taxes. I would trust it more than I would trust Zillow.

If it's really true, something isn't quite right. And sometimes you can petition to have your own taxes reduced based on the fact that other similar houses/homeowners near you pay less. Either that, or they'll go after your neighbor and they'll ask him to pay as much as you're paying.
smile.gif
 
Zillow is not that accurate when it comes to home prices. It should have accurate data for taxes assuming they pull actual data. Some people do file a tax grievence in hopes of lowering the taxes.

I bought an abandoned house and it was taxed at the rate before it was abandoned and vandalized. I got the taxes to drop to 1/3 of what I had been paying. Five years latter they did a reevaluation and taxes went through the roof.
 
go to the city, town or county office and ask to look at your house to see what they have for square footage, # of baths etc. In my case they had a bath that did not exist and only an on site inspection could change it.

Zillow used to be great for looking at all the details but now, well the realtors have gotten to it and cannot get all the info one used to be able to get.

Anyway, go to the office and have a general discussion with the person there and seek clarification. You don't need an appealto do that.

Also, some areas have senior discounts that can affect the tax
 
First of all, which state are you in?

In California due to Prop 13, your property tax is capped to an increase of 1.xxx percent (forgot the exact number) per year since you bought it and appraised at the purchase price that year.

So you end up with a 50 year old house with ridiculous valuation of like $50k and the same house who was sold would have a valuation of $1M. The property tax would probably be a difference between $1k and $10k in this case.

This is why the state has always try to use eminent domain to tear down old neighborhood and the government is relying a lot on income and sales tax, rather just 1 and property tax.

This lead to a huge load of political and fiscal issues.
 
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Is your area a rehab or special devilment? My neighborhood offered a tax abatement on any improvements to the property. That saves us a ton in taxes every year since we filed for it & documented the entire renovation.
 
I know on my house, since my grandparents originally purchased it in 1968, I only pay about $1,500 a year in property tax. The house is still only valued at about 75k according to the county. Our neighbors with a smaller house, 1800 sq ft vs mine that is 2200, and they pay about $12,000 a year in taxes since they bought theirs for 999k at the height of the bubble.
 
Originally Posted By: bdcardinal
I know on my house, since my grandparents originally purchased it in 1968, I only pay about $1,500 a year in property tax. The house is still only valued at about 75k according to the county.


Today's your lucky day - I'll give ya $150k for it. Double! Can't beat that, right?

wink.gif
 
As PandaBear said, Prop 13 skews the tax base for many home owners in California. It's a bonus for long time homeowners and newer homeowners pay hefty tax for similar houses in the same neighborhood.
 
Originally Posted By: surfstar
Originally Posted By: bdcardinal
I know on my house, since my grandparents originally purchased it in 1968, I only pay about $1,500 a year in property tax. The house is still only valued at about 75k according to the county.


Today's your lucky day - I'll give ya $150k for it. Double! Can't beat that, right?

wink.gif



haha, I had the bill of sale in their trust, they bought the house for 32,000 and spent an extra 1k on landscaping. Trust me, the house wasn't handed to me by any means.
 
There are a number of reasons why similarly valued properties can have significantly different tax liabilities.

Taking my state (Iowa) as an example, there are a number of credits that can be used (Military, Homestead, DSC, etc). They can make a fair difference in the tax amount. There are also a number of exemptions for which a homeowner can apply (we have one on our property that reduces our tax burden by 10%, along with military and homestead credits).

Homes a block or two from each other (or even across the street) can have different tax amounts because they are in different tax district, or a special assessment may be applied to one. The authorities within a district can also make a difference; the township, city, fire district, school district or area community college will all make a difference.

My parents home/property sits in a city and is valued at about $120,000 and they pay roughly $2,000 in property taxes every year. Our home/property sits in a rural area and is valued at about 4 times what my parents home is, but our property taxes are within $100/year of being the same as theirs.

And, as has been mentioned, the information you are seeing may not be accurate. A better source of information would be your local assessor's website-most of them now contain a lot of information about the home.
 
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