ANy info on Ft Bend County/Cinco Ranch area (Houston: mortgage, lawyers)

[MS1811]

My wife and I may be afforded the opportunity to relocate to the Houston area come early next year. My wife has family in Katy so we are looking at buying a home probably west side of 99 in Fort Bend County/ Cinco Ranch area.

We are looking at something 0-10 yrs old, 3000 sq ft, with a pool and preferably under the $400K mark. I noticed inventory shrinking for homes in that range and parameters the past two months, most likely because slow time of year to put a house up with holidays around the corner.

Are sellers taking lower bids these days in that neighborhood below what they are asking? ALso, what would be the range of TOTAL property taxes be for a home in the $350-400K range? We are new to the terms "homestead exemption" so not sure what that is all about and if it offers a substantial discount on overall property taxes or not.

We're coming from the DC area. Trying to figure out what a mortgage would be out there with taxes. Property taxes in Northern VA are about 1%, pretty low but high prices on small properties. ANy help would be greatly appreciated! THanks.

[alwaysflyin]

You should have no problem at that price range finding something that fits your needs. Your wish list sounds exactly like ours when we were looking, and were taken to ten houses. We closed last month on our house. As for property taxes, you're probably looking at around 2.8%.

My best advice is go to www.har.com and run a search on your criteria. You should be able to find several options.

[stratfordspartans]

Also when running your search on HAR for subdivisions, you should also check "Seven Meadows" and "Grand Lakes" in addition to just Cinco Ranch. These two neighborhoods are both great and have homes in your price range.

[MS1811]

Well thank you. I erecently became familiar with the HAR.com website and definitely think its the best up to date accurate listing website. Any other further input from forum members about the property tax and homestead issues will be greatly appreciated.

[RVD26]

If you're looking west of 99 (which is where I live), your property taxes could easily be 3% or even higher.
I'm not too familiar with the homestead exemption myself.
We were told that if you reside in a home after January 1, you can apply for an exemption which will slightly lower your tax rate.
Things are a little different here in TX than they are in VA, as I'm sure you'll find out soon.
House prices here are relatively cheap, but you make up for it in property taxes.

[sbhubbell]

Your wish list also sounds exactly like ours was when we relocated to Cinco a year ago. As far as homes on the market right now, I will say that they seem to be moving a bit faster these days. There was a house down the street from mine, same model as mine, that was unoccupied and sat on the market priced 50K over what we paid for over a year. Recently they dropped the price a bit, and then I found out it did just sell for about 15K under what it was listed at. But that's not really the norm, that price was grossly overpriced to begin with. I'm just glad it sold for 10K MORE than I paid for mine. Both homes are 3 yrs old now.

Taxes are just over 3%...I'm not sure the exact numbers of our taxes but they are in the 8-9K range, I believe. The area is lovely, we live in Highland Park which is a fully built out section of Cinco that's about 2-4 yrs old.

We ended up cutting our monthly mortgage payment way down when we moved here from Philly, but the property taxes just about balanced out our total monthly payment so it is the same as what we were paying...however our house here is much larger.

[JustCinco]

The homestead exemption brings down your total tax rate on average from 15 to 20%. You need to check what the total tax rate is before homestead, as has been mentioned, in some areas is well above $3 (per $100 of value on the property). In some subdivisions the tax rate is much higher than others, the reason is the MUD tax (Municipal Utility District), MUD tax varies from one subdivision to another.

[rhiamon]

I recently talked to a builder in Ft Bend County (I forget which neighborhood, but the builder was Brighton) and they told me the tax rate was 3.61%. Another neighborhood we talked to told us it was 3.5%. I believe those rates were before homesteading, though. I just did a quick search on HAR, and it looks like most of the houses in the $400K range are paying about $10k/year in taxes.

As for homesteading, I believe the way it works is that you can file for the exemption the first Jan 1 after you buy the house. So if you closed today, you'd pay the full tax rate for the rest of the year and then you could file your homesteading paperwork and it'll go down.

One word of warning about homesteading though. After you close on a house, you will be inundated with junk mail from lawyers, etc. offering to file your homesteading paperwork for you, etc. DON'T DO IT. Most of these guys, from what I have seen, charge in the neighborhood of $600 to file the form. The form, very literally, is a one-page form. It is not difficult or hard or confusing to fill out. A monkey with a crayon could file that form with no problems. It'll take you ten minutes to do if you write slow. Just wanted to give you a heads up. Those companies prey on guys like you who don't know anything about it (I'm assuming, forgive me if you've done your research) and don't know how easy it is.

[AK123]

Originally Posted by rhiamon

I recently talked to a builder in Ft Bend County (I forget which neighborhood, but the builder was Brighton) and they told me the tax rate was 3.61%. Another neighborhood we talked to told us it was 3.5%.

Must be a completely new area where all of the utilities need to be built.

Some homes we were looking at in more established areas of Fort Bend (First Colony) were 2.2%. Our current area is a newer subdivision but in a mostly established area, and it's 2.5%. So yes, you can't look at the county as a whole, or even an entire MPC like Cinco; each subdivision will have a different rate most likely.

[rhiamon]

I think the first was Silver Ranch -- it was in Fort Bend. The second one was Lakecrest, which is in Harris.