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Stupid question about property taxes
I?m not sure if anyone would know the answer to this, but I was curious about the process of 'grieving taxes'. I was told that you can do this and it may or may not lower your property tax, depending on the situation, but does doing something like this affect your credit?
We've been looking at homes on Long Island, and the property taxes are obscene, but I was told that you could grieve the taxes and possibly get them lowered. Particularly if you are paying a lot less for the home than what the government 'assesses' the house at.
I had an argument with someone who butt into a conversation I was having with someone else about this and they were insisting that grieving taxes will ruin your credit. I?m pretty sure they are wrong - I've never heard of such a thing - but I checked online to find information about this and came up with nothing.
The taxes are definitely going to be a factor in whichever house we wind up choosing....we've seen a few homes that we love, but man, the taxes are brutal.
Re: Stupid question about property taxes
I'm not sure what grieving taxes means but it sounds like you would want to file an appeal about the assessed value? We plan on doing it next year when tax bills are issued because our house is assessed at much more than we paid this year (market value). We have to wait until the property tax assessments are issued here in a few months and then we need to file an appeal with our township assessor. I assume here is where we put down how much we paid even though they already have records of that. Then it goes to a meeting and it's approved or denied. If denied, then I think we can request another appeal and meet with the board. It will not affect your credit at all. If you do not pay your property taxes they can put a lien on your house which would affect your taxes but your property taxes have nothing to do with your credit until you don't pay for a long time.
However, be aware that the assessment can rise in the future (so taxes will go up) or that the tax rate can go up even if the assessment doesn't go up. So it's not good to bank on your property taxes always being $x/month and max out your budget and struggle when they go up.
Yes, I am well aware that taxes can/will go up so we are not basing our budget soley on x amount of $ for that. We actually can afford the obscene taxes on the island, but would prefer to not have to pay this high amount if we do not have to (right away). The process of 'grieving taxes' is exactly how you described and it seems to be very common here - I've even seen this in some of the real estate listings we've looked at (ie: taxes have never been 'grieved' and do not reflect star discount). Basically everything you've said is what I figured already, but I just wanted to be sure that doing something like this to hopefully lower the taxes when we do purchase a home would not affect our credit scores since my miss smarty pants MIL insisted that it would 'ruin your credit'. Of course when I told her that is simply not true, she continued to argue with me, to which I proceeded to get up and leave the room. She butted into a conversation I was having with my BIL anyway - typical.
Fyi, my MIL lives in queens and has been doing anything and everything possible to try to convince us to stay in queens too. So the whole taxes thing has been one of her 'arguements' to try to convince us that living in queens is better (lower taxes is one of them). My hubby and I have absolutely no desire to stay in queens and have told her this repeatedly anytime SHE brings up the subject. We do our best to not even talk about anything housing related, but sometimes she will mention something and then it's like here we go again. I do my best to just avoid engaging her, but there's been a few times, such as this one, where it's been unavoidable. Not to mention, when she just pulls completely wrong information out of her a$$, I feel that I have no other choice but to correct her, then leave the room
Anyway, thanks for the info - this was exactly what I needed to know and is much appreciated!
We bought a house in Nassau and we both grew up here. It's not as easy as you think. My mother grieved her taxes for several years before she said screw it, and here's why:
In order to have your taxes grieved here, you have to have a county appraiser come out and re-assess your home. Based on that appraisal, you can either a) accept what they have to say or b) hire one of the specialists to fight it. What ends up happening is that it'll save you a little if you are in the right, but then you may have to go through the fight every year. My mom had to do this every year and she only ended up saving maybe $50/year and it was more of a headache than it was worth.
Star discounts are not something to grieve. There's a form you fill out, and they'll tell you where to go if you ask at your closing. You need the deed and there's another paper, I forget which.
The town you choose on LI can have a HUGE difference on your taxes. The town we live in shares a district with my mother's, but we have a much larger house and much lower taxes than her. Just do your research and you should be fine.
RIP Dr. Irving Fishman - 10/1/19-7/25/10 - thank you for holding on for me.
You made my wedding day complete.
Yes, the star discount I know is something different - was just giving an example of some of the descriptions we've seen in the real estate listings. I will take what you said into consideration too - I was more curious about whether something like this affects your credit. See, my MIL wanted to argue that with me because she wants to make it seem like she knows everything and because she is 'older and wiser' that she knows what she is talking about. She's chock full of wrong information. lol She also cannot stand the fact that her son is now married and that we are making our own decisions for how/where we want to live. She really is pushing for us to stay in Queens, but the only thing we can reasonably afford in Queens is a coop and both my husband & I are so over the whole coop thing. It's either that, or live in a really ghetto area, like Jamaica or something if we were to get a single family home. Not to mention, we just don't like Queens even if it is convenient to the city. Taxes aside, I like Long Island....lots to do, the beaches are there, still close to the city depending on where you go.....now to just find a house that we love.....
RIP Dr. Irving Fishman - 10/1/19-7/25/10 - thank you for holding on for me.
You made my wedding day complete.
Yea, we already ruled out Suffolk County.....both of us work in the city and the commute from there would be too far. I've also done that commute before and it kinda sucks. What's really funny is the fact that my MIL called my husband once and said she had a realtor 'friend' who was selling brand new constructions in Lindenhurst. She said it to me too and I said to her - do you even know WHERE Lindenhurst is? She had absolutely no clue....silly woman. lol Basically, we are trying to stay as close to the city/my in-laws as possible without being too close. We actually started our search on the north shore because of the proximity to my in laws, but didn't see anything we liked, so we expanded into Lynbrook and Malverne, which is literally 15 minutes away from them by car. The schools in both districts are decent and I?m actually hoping that whatever home we do wind up with will be our 'forever' home. I?m a bit older and have moved around quite a bit in my life, so I would prefer to just settle down once and for all.
Thanks for the tips and happy new year
RIP Dr. Irving Fishman - 10/1/19-7/25/10 - thank you for holding on for me.
You made my wedding day complete.
I lived on Long Island (Suffolk County) for 8 years. You're allowed to grieve your taxes every other year. The first year we did it, our taxes were lowered from $17K-$15 and then I believe the next big drop was to just under $14K right before we left. I would have to check.
We went through an agency that did it for us and it was lowered every time we grieved. I have neighbors who did the whole process themselves and they say it's very easy.
In the years that I grieved my taxes, nobody EVER came to assess the home.
They assessed based on current home values and sales in the area. Not sure how it's done in Nassau. I was in Smithtown.
Just to point out, even if you successfully grieve, your bank may take some time to change your monthly escrow payment to reflect the difference. The initial years payments will be based on the assessed value at time of purchase. They only evaluate escrow payments at the end of the year.
I'm also in NY (Putnam - so similar tax rate to Nassau) I greived mine and successfully got purchase price (which was about 40% of assessed - but should note mitigating circumstances due to being under renovation) - I expect taxes to go up again this year to about 80% of previous assessed value (it was over assessed to begin with)). At the end of 2011 I got a huge check from my mortgage company for the tax difference. For 2012, the bank only changed my monthly escrow payment by about $15. If they were just looking at this years tax rate, it should have gone down by about $400 a month.
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