Property Taxes - Know Your Numbers!

One of the benefits of working for my Broker, Ron DiDonna, who is also an Appraiser that has a 98% success rate grieving taxes is that I have a whole lot of tax information readily available.

One of the questions asked by every potential buyer is - "How much are the taxes?"  I used to just tell them the amount.  But then I realized I had a treasure trove of information available to me that just might make someone want to choose my property over, say, one in the next community where they have an Extra Tax.  So - along with giving them the actual tax amount, I started telling them the tax rate per thousand dollars for the Town of my featured listing.  The actual tax amount generally makes their eyes glaze over - especially in this state.  But once I began sharing the tax rate per thousand dollars, they started scrabbling for pen and paper so they'd remember it - and always be able to calculate the tax rates of any other property in that same Town. Now they're comparing Apples with Apples when they hear tax amounts.  And Tax Rates to Tax Rates. Currently, our Tax Rate in my featured listing's Town is $30.22/per thousand dollars of assessed value (pre STAR) vs. $40.00/per thousand dollars of assessed value (pre STAR) in the Village right next door.

I can hear the jaws dropping all over the country from those of you paying far less.  This listing is definitely in a high tax County.  But - the good news for those looking at my huge house is that they can get far more house here for the tax money than they can in the community right next door.  A fact they might not have known had I not had that wonderful wealth of tax numbers floating in my head.

And that's not even mentioning the Equalization Rate in this Town, which is 91%.  So they're not actually paying taxes on the whole assessed value.  (More pen and paper scrabbling...)

Of course, this kind of backfires for listings that might come to me in that neighboring Village.  But the Village is a beautiful area, and has benefits of its own that are easily capitalized upon.

Moral to the story - Learn your tax rates!