taxes/assessments question

[WannaComeHome]

thanks everyone, for your input. Actually my parents are out today checking out the house to see if it's in good enough shape for us to actually come up and maybe move forward on it. <crossed fingers>

After dong some research, there are a number of confusing things about it, and hopefully my parents can answer some of them!

Oh, and the taxes have gone up since last year: because Mason pulled out of the school system, town taxes have gone from $16.44 to 17.99 - I knew someone would have to cover the shortfall when I heard Mason got approval (they've been trying for a while).

We'll see!

[Valerie C]

Wanna, keep me in the loop! It'll be interesting to see which information is correct, and why we might have seen the discrepancies that we did...
ttyl

[rmcewan]

We were just re-assessed for about 30K more than our purchase appraisal last year. When we asked at the town hall about abatement, we were told that most of the town assessments (in Madbury) run around 106% of market value. Because all are assessed at 106%, we cannot prove that you are being unfairly taxed relative to other homes, so an abatement would be denied.

[WannaComeHome]

Well, my mom called me - the house is in really bad shape (which is quite sad, because we knew it 'when'). My agent wasn't the one who took her out, it sounds like the owner of the company who is also a contractor (they do both real estate and contracting) took them. He was toting up repair costs on things and were about around $2k -not counting some roof repair and likely foundation repair (the foundation has vertical slabs of granite, some of which are kinda 'caving' although it doesn't seem to affected anything... yet). But her message on my answering machine (before she called my cell phone) was that she saved us airplane tickets up. And she doesn't have any idea how they could assess it that high and charge nearly $5k in taxes.

Val, I'll give you a call about it in a bit.

[OCCASparky]

Originally Posted by rmcewan

We were just re-assessed for about 30K more than our purchase appraisal last year. When we asked at the town hall about abatement, we were told that most of the town assessments (in Madbury) run around 106% of market value. Because all are assessed at 106%, we cannot prove that you are being unfairly taxed relative to other homes, so an abatement would be denied.

That's where you ask them if they'd be willing to pay that price for the property. Frankly, I have no idea how they can justify pushing ANYONE'S assessment higher if it was done within the past 4 years. No way, no how.

Couple that with the fact that at one point the Rochester City Council talked about a $5 per 1K increase (we were at $18.81), and I have no idea where the money is coming from. Or where it's going.

In retrospect, it could be a LOT worse. I did a little checking, and here are the rates since 2001 for where I live:

2001--24.83
2002--20.43
2003--18.87
2004--20.25
2005--17.30
2006--18.34
2007--18.81
2008--19.99--from city website--not on state website yet

[buck naked]

the rate per thousand is only comparable if the value of the home is at 100% valuation

for example, the 2001 $24.83 could be on a house valued at $100K (50% valuation of a $200K home) - the rate has to be higher to make up the difference to the town - as the homes value is raised, the tax rate can be dropped

of course, there's always those little extras that the town has to pay off like new schools and libraries, etc. lol...

[OCCASparky]

The one thing that annoys me to death about NH property taxes is that the assessment and rate is retro, so your June payment is going to be smaller than the December one--sometimes significantly so.

IOW, they don't split the difference.

[buck naked]

hey, once upon a time, it wasn't two payments per year - it used to be affordable with just one.