Average Taxes by Town (avg $ and % increase) (Needham, Westborough: 2015, city hall)

[BostonMike7]

My assessment went up. Yearly tax bill went up $500....and haven't even made the first mortgage payment yet

[Dm84]

Originally Posted by BostonMike7

My assessment went up. Yearly tax bill went up $500....and haven't even made the first mortgage payment yet

Expect a nice surprise next year when your escrow amount is recalculated.

[Parsec]

Originally Posted by Dm84

Expect a nice surprise next year when your escrow amount is recalculated.

LOL, my "fixed rate mortgage" payment has been going up $50/mo every year since I moved here due to the annual escrow recalculation.

[Amontillado]

Erving isn't as much fun as it used to be before they rebuilt Rte 2 through the eastern end of the town. I used to look forward to "curving and swerving through Erving".

Oh, taxes, yes that's the topic isn't it.

[BostonMike7]

Originally Posted by Dm84

Expect a nice surprise next year when your escrow amount is recalculated.

Yeah, i'm going to head that off and start paying the extra amount now towards escrow.


I don't like surprises

[MikePRU]

Originally Posted by Parsec

Assessments do matter because it allows the town to increase taxes for particular houses or entire neighborhoods to adjust for market values at the micro level. For example if houses near the walkable downtown are increasing in value at a faster rate than houses on the outskirts of town, the town can increase the tax levy on the houses downtown at a faster rate than houses that aren't within walking distance to the train. At least that's my understanding of how this works, so please correct me if I'm wrong MikePRU. I noticed my taxes were higher than other identical houses on my street. This past year the town finally increased their assessments and kept mine the same, so our taxes are now comparable.

In theory, that's the way it's supposed to work. The whole system is built to lag significantly behind the market. So, it's very slow in making those adjustments. Even ignoring that fact, it's a very imperfect system and doesn't always work the way it should or at least in the period that it should.

How many years was your assessment higher than your neighbors who had similar homes?

Originally Posted by Amontillado

Erving isn't as much fun as it used to be before they rebuilt Rte 2 through the eastern end of the town. I used to look forward to "curving and swerving through Erving".

Oh, taxes, yes that's the topic isn't it.

Can't say I've ever been there. I'm aware that the world does not end at Worcester as our Western MA friends like to remind us Eastern MA folks but it sounds like Erving is a place you can pass through and miss it if you blink.

[Dm84]

Originally Posted by Parsec

LOL, my "fixed rate mortgage" payment has been going up $50/mo every year since I moved here due to the annual escrow recalculation.

Exactly. People who think buying a house with a fixed rate mortgage means their rent doesn't increase are in for a rude awakening.

[Dm84]

Originally Posted by BostonMike7

Yeah, i'm going to head that off and start paying the extra amount now towards escrow.


I don't like surprises

Honestly I wouldn't bother. You don't get penalized for this and paying extra doesn't really put you in a better position.

[n1ey]

Originally Posted by MikePRU

Who doesn't love property taxes?

Maybe we should all move to Erving? RE taxes there went down over 20% this year. I don't think I've ever heard of Erving, MA. I'm going to have to Google map it.

Needham went up 3.76% Of course, that's an average and with all of the teardowns going on in town (at least 100 per year) that certainly affects the average.

There is a real problem with the property tax consistently rising at least twice the rate of inflation in many years. This became an overt campaign issue in many prior gubernatoral cycles.

People can not afford to live in their homes. Senior citizens even with a modest amount of savings are strapped. People can rent apartments in rural California near a beach for less than the annual property tax on houses in Brookline. IT might not sound like a litmus test, but it is.

For a progressive society we focus on regressive taxation. The burden on these taxes fares more on the poor. They poor and middle class pay most of this taxation. Unlike other states a good chunk of school budgets comes from property taxes.

In the article it is stated as follows.

“Our state government and local government doesn’t have a revenue problem. It has a spending problem,” said Paul D. Craney, executive director of the conservative advocacy group Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance. “I’m not surprised that the taxes are going up, and they’re going to continue to increase until spending is reined in.”[
A systematic solution for quality and lower costs is required. Overtime the pressure on real estate taxes would diminish. The rates would not increase. They could actually decrease as the property values rise.

I recommend regional solutions for most of the towns. Look at Holbrook and Abington. They are building schools when they should be combined. They should be in one school building. The capital cost saving would be immense. The two adjacent towns are so small. One could easily see the two towns as being one.

Already several towns have worked on this. Shared service agreements would be beneficial at a minimum. I once recommended that 3 towns share the Veteran's agent. It met with horror. The reality was that the fellow in each office sat idle for 2 or 3 days per a week.

I was keen on sharing the Health Services department. When you only have a few restaurants in town you can join forces with another town. We could have actually hired someone with more skill and professionalism at a higher rate of pay. It would have increased reliability and quality of the Health Agent while lowering costs.

Bill

[Parsec]

Originally Posted by n1ey

I recommend regional solutions for most of the towns. Look at Holbrook and Abington. They are building schools when they should be combined. They should be in one school building. The capital cost saving would be immense. The two adjacent towns are so small. One could easily see the two towns as being one.

Already several towns have worked on this. Shared service agreements would be beneficial at a minimum. I once recommended that 3 towns share the Veteran's agent. It met with horror. The reality was that the fellow in each office sat idle for 2 or 3 days per a week.

Bill

Shared school buildings is a good start for smaller towns, but I don't think it goes far enough. Most public school systems in the US are run at the county level which offers even more cost savings on the administrative side.