Single Family Homes in the Bronx?

[yodel]

I agree with bluedog. Woodlawn is a great neighborhood. It's attractive, green and people are very friendly. The local school (K-8 grade) has a good very good reputation. The only downside that I can see is the distance from the subway. I'm pretty sure the majority of people who live there have cars. On-street parking is tight, although there are no alternate side street cleaning rules.

[bluedog2]

Originally Posted by gingercat

....

"Decent prices" means not $800,000 (or more) for a "fixer upper." Having grown up in New York State, I kind of automatically assume property taxes will be disgusting.

The listings I looked at for Woodlawn were certainly more than what one would pay upstate, but well below what I've gotten used to seeing when noodling around in real estate listings here.....

Property taxes in NYC are astonishingly low.Much,much lower than either a comparable house or a comparably valued house ( they are different) in most of the nearby suburbs of Westchester,L.I. or New Jersey.

Taxes on an average decent Bronx single family house of $500,000 or $600,000 might be in the $3,000 to $4,000 per year range.Taxes on a $500,000 or $600,000 house in most nearby Westchester communities would likely be between $15,000 and $20,000 per year !

Of course the downside for city homeowners who have children is that NYC only spends around $8,000 per year per student on the school system while many Westchester and L.I towns spend $20,000 or more per student each year.
That's what keeps the taxes so low.

[MikefromCT]

Originally Posted by bluedog2

Property taxes in NYC are astonishingly low.Much,much lower than either a comparable house or a comparably valued house ( they are different) in most of the nearby suburbs of Westchester,L.I. or New Jersey.

Taxes on an average decent Bronx single family house of $500,000 or $600,000 might be in the $3,000 to $4,000 per year range.Taxes on a $500,000 or $600,000 house in most nearby Westchester communities would likely be between $15,000 and $20,000 per year !

Of course the downside for city homeowners who have children is that NYC only spends around $8,000 per year per student on the school system while many Westchester and L.I towns spend $20,000 or more per student each year.
That's what keeps the taxes so low.

But don't you pay a boro tax if you own a house? At least that was my understanding. Regardless, the property taxes you listed seem low. Are they generally higher in the Bronx than they are in, say, Manhattan?

The figures you gave for property taxes in Jersey and Westchester are, unfortunately, accurate. My family in Cranford pays over $10k for theirs on their house and this is for a raised ranch from the '50s. But they live right outisde the city so their house value is high, so the taxes probably reflect this. Jersey's are the highest in the nation. No joke.

[Viralmd]

No, there is no borough tax.

[bluedog2]

I am pretty sure about the tax figures because I briefly toyed with the idea of buying a house.I looked at houses and condos and co-ops all over The Bronx less than 2 years ago.Also,if you go onto Trulia or any of those other sites and do a search for single family homes in The Bronx you will see that many have the tax info in the listing.
I think a building of the same class(single family let's say) is taxed at the same rate anywhere in the city so the taxes on a 600,000 house should be the same in Brooklyn,Queens, The Bronx or Staten Island.
There are no 600,000 houses in Manhattan and the condo and coop tax structures are different.
I do know that I paid 170,000 for my co-op and that the amount of my monthly maintenance that goes to NYC property taxes is about $150.00. x 12 would be 1,800/yr but the co-op thing kind of confuses it because it's not the same class building.
Anyway,there is no doubt that the property taxes are substantially lower in NYC than any place around.
I decided not to buy a house in the city but a coop instead with the idea of buying a house somewhere outside the city for summers and weekends and have been looking at houses in Columbia County.Even there the taxes seem higher than in the city.The taxes on a 300,000 house seem to be around 3,000 a year in most towns.And that's almost 2 hours north ,near The Berkshires.