Over payment of Property tax in Northern Maine

[flycessna]

Originally Posted by NJ2ME

live in Maine with a mortgage of say for example 100,000 with taxes of 1,000, with beautiful land and peace and quiet and not living on top of my neighbors, (we like rural too) My degree is needed up there and the average starting salary is 32,000 (only a few less per year then here),

You can say all you want that Maine is the worst or 2nd for property taxes but I still choose to pay that over what I am paying here in NJ. What it comes down too.... its different for each and every person, but Maine being so rural and such a high % of lower income wage earners, and then states that are much richer population wise, its going to effect those percentages a lot. It still falls person to person how it is going to effect them. For me and my family, Maine is what we choose.

No one wants to distort your dream....I would never argue about Maine's taxes vs NJ"s taxes....they are both bad!

.........I thought the same thing before I moved to Maine.........buy a house for half the price, pay less taxes, make only a little bit less then what I was making but not have the crime, traffic, and just all the BS of living in place like NJ (I came from mass, & DC). But it just doesn't work as easy as that. Where ever you end up you will be making sacrifices coming here. Life can be harder here in Maine, but depending on what it is your looking for can be well worth it.

[kellysmith]

northho,
I'm no lawyer, but I did stay at a Holiday Express once. As NMLM stated, most deeds for larger tracts of land, (in fact many small tracts of land) have that clause "more or less" in them. I think the defining piece of what the taxes were for the time period you are looking at is the tax map. Go into the town office and look at it and it will show a parcel, show the valuation assigned by the tax assessor, and that's what the tax is based on. A definitive number of the exact acreage of each parcel is not something that's part of a tax map, at least in my opinion. I own a piece of land in the county and the deed shows me owning to the center of the road. Of course the town has a 66 ft right of way, half of which is from my property. In my eyes, my land starts 33 ft from the center of the road, but not in the eyes of the deed, the town, or the tax assessor. Am I paying taxes on half of the land the road is built on? I guess it could be debated both ways, but the deed shows it as part of what I'm taxed on. I really don't consider myself being taxed for the roadway, and the taxes aren't based as so much per acre, they are based on the parcel as drawn on the tax map.
In Monticello there are some lots that were established as one mile wide. Two roads run parallel East-West defining these lots. The deeds state the lots start in the center of the east-west roads. The two roads were actually built 5240 ft apart back in the 1800's. I have a friend who owns half of one of these lots. Who owns the extra 30 ft? Actually it was surveyed a couple years ago and the extra land was divided between the adjoining landowners. I'm surprised you got the tax assessor to lower the taxes even for one year. I can't see what legal grounds would require the town to do so.

[NJ2ME]

Originally Posted by flycessna

No one wants to distort your dream... Life can be harder here in Maine, but depending on what it is your looking for can be well worth it.

We are well aware there will be plenty of sacrifices, but with what we know and have seen of Maine, its still our dream in which is getting closer everyday. We are NOT coming to Maine for the "lower taxes" OR because we think it will be overall cheaper. WE DO think things like property taxes (FOR US), lower house payment (for us), lower car innsurance (for us), BUT we know we'll have other expenses to make up for them in their place. But, when I see some argue that there is no other state with a higher tax (tax burden) and they will be worse off in Maine, it does make me want to disagree with that because really it depends on each persons situation. They are based on averages. Anyway, we ARE coming to Maine for our # one reason, no matter WHAT we must sacrifice for "The Way Life Should Be" We want the peace and quiet, we want the beauty, we are quiet people who stick to ourselves but would always give a helping hand when needed, we are people who never ask of other people, but are very grateful when people volunteer their help in our rare time of need, we have 3 yound children who are still innocent and we want to keep it that way as they are still children as long as we can. We don't want our children having to be "street smart" just to protect thereselves. We want to watch the news without hearing about 6 new deaths/murders every single day and it just becomes 2nd nature to hear about it, we want to be able to walk slower through town and actually be able to make eye contact not fearing being robbed/mugged. We will live our dream EVEN if we have to scrape by, besides we are very used to scraping by and we deffintely don't have anything "to keep up with the jones" now and thats not a life we live. We are still happy now, we make due with what we have and make the best of life, and I have a feeling it will be even easier to be happy with what we have in Maine when we love where we are as well.