Austin property taxes jump 38% over past decade

[mayfair44]

Originally Posted by Austin97

Property taxes should never drive people out of their homes.

If your home was 200K and is now 500K, you can simply get a home equity loan for 100K and use that to pay additional property taxes for the next 20 years.It is never a bad thing for your property value to go up

Yeah, don't forget to tell them that when they turn their home into a ATM, the money isn't free. Might want to read the fine print on the terms from the bank. Isn't this the way lots of folks went underwater on their equity, bc they couldn't keep from spending it all on crap- new cars, improvements etc.

Just bc TCAD over-appraises your value (artificially) on paper, and you're thinking gosh that's great, doesn't mean you're property (equity) is really worth that much.

[ITO]

Originally Posted by Austin97

Property taxes should never drive people out of their homes.

If your home was 200K and is now 500K, you can simply get a home equity loan for 100K and use that to pay additional property taxes for the next 20 years.It is never a bad thing for your property value to go up

$300,000 X .023823 = $7,146.90 The $100,000 loan (not including finance fees and interest) would only pay for 14 years of extra taxes (provided they did not increase, which we know they will), not the 20 you suggested. Why anyone would just get a home equity loan and essentially pay for the privilege of gifting part of your home to the government is very odd to me and makes me wonder what you are thinking.

A $100,000 home equity loan over 15 years (5%) will cost you around $141,550 (plus around $2,500 finance charges on the front end). Your monthly payment would be around $790, which if you just escrowed $596 a month for taxes, you could just pay the additional taxes without the loan.

A $100,000 home equity loan over 30 years (%5) will cost you around $175,930 (plus around $2,500 finance charges on the front end). Your monthly payment would be around $536, which if you just escrowed $596 a month for taxes, you could just pay the additional taxes without the loan.

Granted I did not factor in the tax write off for mortgage interests but the $200 a year you might make on that did not seem like enough to figure in.

With all due respect I do not think you have thought it through very well, and agree with the other poster that these kind of schemes and thinking were contributing factors as to how we got into out last national meltdown.