Tested the Real Estate Market

Parent Cafe
61

<p>Yes, it is the land that is valued so heavily in my property tax bill. The house isn’t a small house either, but the land is prime.</p>

62

<p>allmusic, I don’t know what MA town you live in, or what games the locals are playing with taxes. I also don’t know if you’ve invested in improvements which would raise your tax base.</p>

<p>What I can tell you is that, by state law, your local town cannot raise the total tax yield from existing property by more than 3%. If yours went up more, someone else got a break. Or you have a house where 3% is your 1000K? or you did the huge addition.</p>

<p>At any rate, if you think MA is bad, head down to Texas. Or check out Cook County IL, or a lot of other places, and look at their increases.</p>

63

<p>Barrons:</p>

<p>The condo fees are too low to be about taxes. In fact, in my estimation, they are too low. I’ve just had a look at my real estate tax bill (single home). It is higher than for the condo, but still not $12k .</p>

64

<p>Just FYI; for a house valued at about $225,000 in Austin, TX- property taxes are almost $6000 a year. (There is no state income tax; sales tax is 8.25%)</p>

65

<p>Another data point:</p>

<ul>
<li> we looked at houses in Oak Park, IL and Chicago. A $600,000 house could have taxes over $10,000 a year, with big jumps year to year. Strangely, we saw one or two in the same price range with taxes at $4,000.<br></li>
</ul>

<p>Add to that sales tax in Chicago of 9% and a state income tax of 3%, and good ole Massachusetts starts looking like a bargain.</p>

66

<p>As Momofwildchild recently mentioned, Nissan has moved its headquarters from California here to Franklin, Tennessee. That move has really driven our property values up. We got a great deal on our house four years ago, and it has already increased in value by more than 60%. Those folks from California can sell their houses there, buy a huge house here and have quite a bit of money left over. We pay 0.434% in city taxes and 2.030% in county taxes each year. We have no income tax, but our sales tax is 9.25%.</p>

67

<p>M&SDad #48,</p>

<p>The $500,000 Upper St. Clair house listing you linked says the age of the house is 999 years. I must say, your houses age amazingly well.</p>

68

<p>I’d say, DRJ! We had a 103 year old house which didn’t look in half as good shape!</p>