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Originally Posted by ronnieglasses
Hello all. My family and I have been in N. Indianapolis for 8 months. We moved from Columbus, Ohio because my wife just got a job at one of your major companies in town. We are in the market for a house and think we may have found something that REALLY fits our needs in terms of location, size and re-sell value. We are concerned, however, because of all the fuss we've heard on the news about high taxes. Has anything been resolved? We want to move out of our apartment ASAP but because we don't know what to expect in taxes...we haven't budged.
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Right now, there are a few things going on with the property tax mess. First, understand that in most areas of Indiana, 45-65% of property taxes are for schools. I will discuss why this is important later on.
#1: We have written into _law_ residential, owner occupied caps on the _appraised_ value of the home. This year it is 1.5%, and I believe it will be 1% next year.
#2: We also have underway a push to amend the Indiana Constitution to put these caps in place permanently. The way Indiana does this, the law has to either pass this year, or next year. If it doesn't, the process has to start all over again (have to vote on the issue twice, in two different election cycles before the people get to vote on it).
As it stands right now, the law is still in effect. The house leader, a flaming socialist named Pat Bauer is blocking the efforts to put the caps into the constitution this year. He claims he wants more time for local units of government to see how the caps affect them. This is all smoke and mirrors. The Indiana State Teacher's Association (a/k/a: Teachers union, ISTA) pretty much controls about half the democrat party in this state. You can see the results of their control over the last decade or so. Massive amounts of wasteful spending at all levels. The schools that are halfway decent blow money on multi-million dollar sports complexes. The poor schools have so many "needs," they have run down facilities, massive administrations, but spend the most per kid than the rich or middle class schools do.
Basically, the ISTA, and really the entire Public School Industrial Complex, are trying to kill these caps. If the caps are written into the state constitution, it will be harder to get a judge to over-rule the caps on a per district basis. There was a huge Democrat party primary battle. It was a workers union candidate vs the public education candidate. It is my opinion that the goal of the public education candidate was to kill these caps, so those involved in the public school industrial complex could continue to make millions on the backs of taxpayers.
This is all very important because as I recall there was already a lawsuit, or talk of a lawsuit against the caps currently written into law. One complaint I heard was that commercial residential (ie: Apartment complexes, rental homes) had their caps at 2%. Their lobbyist group protested, saying that for some, rental living is how they want to live, and those rates should be at 1% just like owner occupied. I can't find anything right now on Google about any lawsuits, so either one was never filed or it was thrown out of court.
So right now, we need that push for an amendment, but certain high ranking Democrats are blocking that, they claim for only "this year." Don't believe them. Their goal is to keep their power in the house and hopefully screw up the entire push for property tax caps. It is all about serving their masters at the public schools.
So, right now things are "unknown." Basically the whole issue is that your poorer schools all over the state stuck it to the small, affluent neighborhoods in those areas. IPS stuck it to the home owners in Meridian-Kessler, Butler-Tarkington, etc.. The districts that serve poor students in Ft. Wayne, Anderson, etc. all stuck it to similar neighborhoods. A Meridian-Kessler home valued at $400K had a tax bill of $11K. Yea, you are paying $11K/year basically for a horrible school system, so most have to spend another $11K/year just to send their kid to private school.
Sometimes I wish the property taxes would have stayed as they were. If you thought white flight/money flight was bad back in the 70s/80s, the people with money who stayed in the old urban cores would have sold their homes the next day if the government didn't do something. So to prevent all of our urban centers here in Indiana from become Detroit, the government did something. Still, just because you get a 1% cap doesn't mean your taxes will not go up. Watch for some units of government to screw with the assessments. There will be lawsuits when some assessors try to up the value of homes in this down market, all so the various units of government get more money.
This thing is far from over. If I were you, I would stay in the apartment for another year. I still think this economy is not going to hold. It is hard to tell. My cousin said a home next to theirs just sold for $180K+. That is in Fishers, a decent size vinyl village home. It may be a fluke though, maybe those folks had money and they loved the house...hard to tell. I would have never thought that home could go for that much in this economy. So I would hold off if you can, bank a ton of money for a nice down payment.
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Tax issues in Marion County
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