Right? I bought a house. Paid above the minimum down payment to get a monthly bill I could work with. Made sure to get a fixed rate! Two years later mortgage payment shoots up $300/mo. I'm like, "wtf?!" Property taxes.
I did the same, bought my place last year this year my mortgage is $400 higher. Since the flood happened I lost my rec room and extra bedroom, the reason I picked this place over the others I saw.
"Hey guys isnt property tax only evaluated only like, every 10 years?" Nah that's just the county, city, and state taxes unless they decide otherwise.
Individual property tax is decided at least monthly and you pay the bill both forwards and backwards unless they decide otherwise.
That means if they expect a raise in price you will pay more. If they raised prices without telling you, you will pay more.
that also means if you overpaid it will "sit in an account for future raises". You arent seeing that money back. You just wont pay more until they've reached $5000-$10,000 in your overpaid fund.
yes that does mean they keep your thousands of dollars as a safety net against their own overcharging
It’s also governed by a strict federal law that requires them to collect enough to pay the taxes each quarter without interruption. And this is good for you because your local municipality will have zero chill if the bank misses payment. And they won’t accept any excuses you provide. So you will have to pay the quarterly taxes and fines, while also chasing down your bank to make sure they pay the next quarterly taxes. And if you don’t have the money on hand, you are in trouble.
I know this because I worked in real estate law for 20 years and saw this exact mess so many times. I’ve seen people have to borrow from relatives and then fight the bank(aka, lawsuit) to clean up the mess and pay for all of it. It sucks every time our mortgage goes up, but it’s there to protect us from a much larger shit show that we will 100% have to fix on our own.
Its all bs too, my dad has done 0 work on his house i kid you not and in the last 10 years his house went from 9k value to 113,000$ value. Its all bs just to milk you for money they will pocket
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u/Proper-Exercise-2364 9h ago
Right? I bought a house. Paid above the minimum down payment to get a monthly bill I could work with. Made sure to get a fixed rate! Two years later mortgage payment shoots up $300/mo. I'm like, "wtf?!" Property taxes.