December 6th, 2005 - Property taxes
Saturday morning, our newspaper said that most city tax bills would come in the mail that day. I bet I was the only person who was excited by this news! See, over the past two years, the city has been doing reassessments. Most homeowners are not terribly happy about this because it happens only once every 10 years. Some people saw their assessed values triple. Ours went up 30%. (A small handful of folks did see theirs decrease, as well.) This has been well covered in the papers, particularly folks complaining about how unfair it was.
I sat back peacefully. When we bought the house 5 years ago, I knew we had paid $30,000 more than the assessed value. Not knowing how reassessments were done, I figured that we’d be reassessed shortly and immediately began saving extra money towards the property taxes. Until last year, I didn’t know that they are done only every 10 years. I’ve been anticipating the reassessed value (finally arrived during the summer, a year after the assessor came) and then the new tax bill to see what the impact would be. I was delighted to learn that we have continued to save plenty, and have saved $120 extra this year.
I will continue to save extra each year–it’s much easier than getting a tax bill that’s higher than what you’ve saved. So far, we’ve upped the savings 10% a year. I will continue to do so for the next 10 years so that I will again be happy to get my tax bill!
(We do not escrow our taxes with our mortgage company. I have no need to let someone else earn the interest on my money. In addition, if they fail to pay the bill properly, they are not penalized–I am. We self-escrow by saving every month. In some states, you do earn the interest on your money, but it’s surely below market rate. In WI, interest is not earned but luckily the law is that they cannot require you to escrow. It is completely up to the homeowner, thankfully for us!)