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Please read up on how NJ does property tax assessment - this statement couldn't be MORE wrong.
Those 3 township's effective tax rates are nearly the same:
Plainsboro - 2.280
Montgomery - 2.223
West Windsor - 2.363
This is completely misguided. Property taxes has nothing to do with effective tax rate, what is matter is how much your township spends, how much it generates in revenue and how your house is accessed relative to rest of the house in the township.
You rate may be just 1% but you may be paying lot more than the town with rate 3% because the assessment in the former town is higher. e.g. Franklin Township
I think all top tier school towns will be comparable taxes wise.
This is completely misguided. Property taxes has nothing to do with effective tax rate, what is matter is how much your township spends, how much it generates in revenue and how your house is accessed relative to rest of the house in the township.
You rate may be just 1% but you may be paying lot more than the town with rate 3% because the assessment in the former town is higher. e.g. Franklin Township
I think all top tier school towns will be comparable taxes wise.
effective tax rate is the best way to assess taxes overall between towns which is what the OP was discussing. effective tax normalizes taxes between townships. look it up. it has nothing to do with your current tax rate.
[SIZE=3][FONT=Calibri]After going thru the forum and seeing different views (-ve) about schools in Montgomery, I feel I am clearly missing something. Recently I came across an article about school rankings in US and MHS has received gold rating and ranked #20 within NJ and three hundred something in the entire nation for 2012. This includes charter schools taking into account and no other school except West Windsor Plainsboro in the surrounding areas were even close to getting bronze. Out of 500 gold rating schools in the country, 32 were from NJ and MHS is one among them.[/FONT][/SIZE]
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[URL="http://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/new-jersey/districts/montgomery-township/montgomery-high-school-12653"][FONT=Calibri][SIZE=3]http://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/new-jersey/districts/montgomery-township/montgomery-high-school-12653[/SIZE][/FONT][/URL]
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[SIZE=3][FONT=Calibri]For those schools isn’t important factor, I would rather suggest to look into other surrounding areas like Franklin twp etc where a similar size home can be purchased for 200K less..[/FONT][/SIZE]
$275 per month is high, perhaps it can be adjusted once we see the actual yearly maintenance expense after the entire community is established, since board members will be home owners, if everyone comes to consensus the community can re-look and award the maintenance contract to a most competitive bid.
Don't you know, the Builders ALWAYS subsidize the cost of the HOA until the development is finished. Then when they are done, and gone from the development and you are on your own, BOOM, your HOA fee is now $325. And guess what, they go UP every year, NOT DOWN.
This is completely misguided. Property taxes has nothing to do with effective tax rate, what is matter is how much your township spends, how much it generates in revenue and how your house is accessed relative to rest of the house in the township.
You rate may be just 1% but you may be paying lot more than the town with rate 3% because the assessment in the former town is higher. e.g. Franklin Township
I think all top tier school towns will be comparable taxes wise.
actually you have good point that I missed. After looking further at what you are mentioning is still fudged. E.g. here are middlesex county effective tax rate http://www.state.nj.us/treasury/taxa...t/gtr12mid.pdf
No way south brunswick effective tax rate is so low compared to other towns, particularly Monroe where taxes are lower than the south brunswick's for comparable house (e.g. 2700 sq ft 10 year old colonial, you will be paying close to $15k in south brunswick vs $13k in Monroe).
Regarding school, I think you are fine as far as you are in 1st tier school district like Hillsborough or Bridgewater. You do not have pay in arm and leg and live in woods middle of nowhere just to boast rights about the school. Top school district is just one bad incident away from ruining the reputation and resale value. Whereas student in good enough school can excel as much with proper attention at home. The Asian who are crazy after top school districts and have inflated real estate in such community forget that they did not even had 1% of facility and attention back home in their school years.
Regarding school, I think you are fine as far as you are in 1st tier school district like Hillsborough or Bridgewater. You do not have pay in arm and leg and live in woods middle of nowhere just to boast rights about the school. Top school district is just one bad incident away from ruining the reputation and resale value. Whereas student in good enough school can excel as much with proper attention at home. The Asian who are crazy after top school districts and have inflated real estate in such community forget that they did not even had 1% of facility and attention back home in their school years.
Bingo.
Someone just posted an article, that KHov sold out their entire phase 1 of a new development in Monroe, people actually camped out overnight to book lots :smh:
actually you have good point that I missed. After looking further at what you are mentioning is still fudged. E.g. here are middlesex county effective tax rate http://www.state.nj.us/treasury/taxa...t/gtr12mid.pdf
No way south brunswick effective tax rate is so low compared to other towns, particularly Monroe where taxes are lower than the south brunswick's for comparable house (e.g. 2700 sq ft 10 year old colonial, you will be paying close to $15k in south brunswick vs $13k in Monroe).
Regarding school, I think you are fine as far as you are in 1st tier school district like Hillsborough or Bridgewater. You do not have pay in arm and leg and live in woods middle of nowhere just to boast rights about the school. Top school district is just one bad incident away from ruining the reputation and resale value. Whereas student in good enough school can excel as much with proper attention at home. The Asian who are crazy after top school districts and have inflated real estate in such community forget that they did not even had 1% of facility and attention back home in their school years.
this is how (a lot of) people in montgomery are. they are obsessed with rankings and scores, which puts intense pressure on kids to perform (as in NO LIFE outside academics, and straight a+ students going to kumon, etc) and the vicious cycle continues and all hell breaks loose if the school drops from 15 to 16. trust me.
montgomery used to pay to have this top SAT person come in a tutor kids, which is why their SAT scores were 1 or 2 in the state. this service or person became cost prohibitive so it was stopped a few years ago and guess what? the scores dropped.
Don't you know, the Builders ALWAYS subsidize the cost of the HOA until the development is finished. Then when they are done, and gone from the development and you are on your own, BOOM, your HOA fee is now $325. And guess what, they go UP every year, NOT DOWN.
Agree, I know from few nearby area communities that HOA costs usually goes up YoY, but in Hillside bluebook the builder has come up with $270/m based on the cost of each maintenance item after considering 89 houses, he has provided the detailed breakdown of expenses for HOA and I guess it is as per current market rate. In that, lawn care and snow removal are the biggest cot factors, comes to around $155/m per house and I feel all home owners can work together to lower these two expenses, rest all kind of pretty reasonable and usualy costs the same at other cummunites as well....good thing in Hillside that there is no pool, which usually takes bulk of the HOA fee though we will be using hardly few days in 4 months when it is open...
Agree, I know from few nearby area communities that HOA costs usually goes up YoY, but in Hillside bluebook the builder has come up with $270/m based on the cost of each maintenance item after considering 89 houses, he has provided the detailed breakdown of expenses for HOA and I guess it is as per current market rate. In that, lawn care and snow removal are the biggest cot factors, comes to around $155/m per house and I feel all home owners can work together to lower these two expenses, rest all kind of pretty reasonable and usualy costs the same at other cummunites as well....good thing in Hillside that there is no pool, which usually takes bulk of the HOA fee though we will be using hardly few days in 4 months when it is open...
Good luck with that. The companies contracted are usually the lowest and will remain the lowest (but not lower price).
And Hillside is no different than any other HOA, they must provide a breakdown when requested. They aren't giving you something no other HOA would give you.
Don't you know, the Builders ALWAYS subsidize the cost of the HOA until the development is finished. Then when they are done, and gone from the development and you are on your own, BOOM, your HOA fee is now $325. And guess what, they go UP every year, NOT DOWN.
Mine stayed stable for about 5 yrs, went up a few bucks, stayed stable for another few years, went up again and has been stable for 2 years now (we are paying $30 more than when we moved in 13 years ago). But it never did go down. I'm on the board and we work VERY hard to keep costs under control but unless we can recoup from deadbeats, our fees will never go down, and if they do, it'll only be about 1-2 bucks.
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