Property Tax question - new construction (2015, assessor, mortgage broker)

[buckeye15]

hi all:


I have a question regarding property taxes on new construction. I am looking to buy an inventory home , that will be complete in march/april this year. Now, the city data shows the last tax assessment based on land value only. Lets say the price of the home is 500k. Tax has been assessed at 100k. If I buy the home in april, will I pay for the lower assessment, until the next complete assessment/ ? how does this work? when will the city assess it next time? is it at the beginning of the year?
I understand eventually my tax obligation is based on my purchase price, but do I get a break until they appraise it that way? Also, say they appraise in January, will they make me pay the higher amount starting from the date I moved in, or is it not backdated?


thanks in advance, hope the question makes sense.

[qwerty14]

Property taxes are assessed based on the property value as of Dec 31st 2015. So you will end up with a much lesser property value assessment than 500k, based on how much construction was done by Dec 31st.

So for year 2016, you are looking a fraction of the property taxes compared to if the home was completely done by December.

[qwerty14]

Originally Posted by qwerty14

Property taxes are assessed based on the property value as of Dec 31st 2015. So you will end up with a much lesser property value assessment than 500k, based on how much construction was done by Dec 31st.

So for year 2016, you are looking a fraction of the property taxes compared to if the home was completely done by December.

I would also like to add that if you are taking a mortgage and are escrowing taxes, the lender may estimate taxes for 2016, so you may be ending up escrowing more money than the actual taxes, but you can always get the escrow reviewed at the end of the year(lenders typically do this once a year) and get the excess money back

[cyrece]

Actually, I asked this question to the tax assessor and they will tax you based on the % of the home being complete at the time they assess up until the home is completed. Other counties/states allow for a vacant land assessment until the next year, beginning when the CO is received.

And the rest, qwerty explained quite well :-)

[angiesu]

I was looking on CD to see if someone posted a property tax question this is somewhat similar to our situation but for last year. We built our house and it was completed June 9th 2015. Today we got a HUGE overage check from our escrow account. I was surprised. I looked back and I see where our mortgage company sent taxes to our county of only $700 (November). I looked online on the Fort Bend county tax page saw the payment, and see zero owed in Taxes. I also see that they only assessed the land value $37,500 (not square footage not the new house). We estimated our taxes to run $10-13k annually. So I thought we would owe at least 5 months. We had about $11,000 in escrow and got a refund of $8,400.

Our mortgage broker (I called her) said we are pretty lucky they did that.

I can't help but wonder if the county come back and decide to collect taxes for 2015? Were we really lucky? Is this too good to be true??? I did hear that if you build fall/winter that most likely you will only be assessed at land value. But June?

[FalconheadWest]

Originally Posted by angiesu

I was looking on CD to see if someone posted a property tax question this is somewhat similar to our situation but for last year. We built our house and it was completed June 9th 2015. Today we got a HUGE overage check from our escrow account. I was surprised. I looked back and I see where our mortgage company sent taxes to our county of only $700 (November). I looked online on the Fort Bend county tax page saw the payment, and see zero owed in Taxes. I also see that they only assessed the land value $37,500 (not square footage not the new house). We estimated our taxes to run $10-13k annually. So I thought we would owe at least 5 months. We had about $11,000 in escrow and got a refund of $8,400.

Our mortgage broker (I called her) said we are pretty lucky they did that.

I can't help but wonder if the county come back and decide to collect taxes for 2015? Were we really lucky? Is this too good to be true??? I did hear that if you build fall/winter that most likely you will only be assessed at land value. But June?

For the house to be completed in June, there couldn't have been much of a house there on Jan 1, so why would you think you would be taxes for the entire house? Your answer is in the posts above that you're not reading. Taxes for that year are assessed on Jan 1 of that year and there was no house there to give them an assessed value over the $37k. You're not "lucky", per se. You just bought at the right time. They cannot assess mid-year.