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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (June 1, 2016)
June 2016 // Real Estate & Home Builders Guide // 17E Comparing cities by property tax payments can be problematic By Ilyce Glink and Samuel J. Tamkin Tribune Content Agency Q : Property taxes on purchase will be a factor for future quarters to come. Is there a site where I can ind comparative average town taxes? For example, Garield, N.J., has signiicantly lower taxes than Paterson, N.J., even though both towns are about equal in population density, schools, mass transit, blue collar, etc. I don’t know how to go about inding out which towns would give best bang for the buck, translating that into lowest property taxes paid per dollar of value. : This is a good question without an easy answer. In general, and depending on where you live, a number of different types of payments get wrapped into your property tax bill. You might pay a portion of the amount to your local municipality to cover the cost of government, the local police and ireighters, water, sewer, garbage pickup and other utilities. Another portion of the payment goes to fund your local school districts. And then another portion might be sent to the state or, if you live in an unincorporated community, the county. A Finding out the actual cost of your property taxes is easy because it’s public data. You can go to your local county treasurer’s ofice or other tax collector’s site (or the website) and look up the taxes paid by the owners of any property. You might be able to do this by address or pin number. It’s harder to ind websites that scrape this data nationwide and then serve it up in an easy-to-use, interactive format that allows you to compare county to county or, better yet, zip code to zip code. Here are some websites we found: CNN Money has an interactive real estate property tax feature that compares the amount of property taxes paid in 3,000 counties nationwide. But it only covers 2007 to 2011. The nonproit Tax Foundation has a map that shows how much the average property tax burden is by state and ranks states in terms of how expensive the property taxes are, but it doesn’t seem to have a calculator that does the comparison you’re looking for. Moving.com allows you to compare two cities on a number of different metrics but doesn’t include property taxes. Still, you can compare home prices, school districts, population demographics, income, HOME OWNERSHIP The American Dream www.easternoregonranches.com SHOWN EXCLUSIVELY BY CLARK JENNINGS Great family home on North Hill. 3 bedroom 3 bath with charming country kitchen. Walking distance to High School. All for $172,000. Call Milne for more info 541-377-7787 rmls# 16301323 OR, LLC 614 SE Court Ave. • Pendleton, OR 97801 • 541-278-9275 • FAX 541-278-9279 ethnicities, education, climate, crime and other factors. The real problem with comparing cities by property tax payments is that so much of the data isn’t really usable when scaled over a large area. Each home’s tax bill can be appealed and, with the right amount of homework, could be reduced somewhat. If you buy an older home and renovate it you might pay substantially less in property taxes than if you bought a new home in the same zip code. In our neighborhood, 541-934-2946 Office 541-519-6891 Cell 41909 Cupper Creek Rd. Kimberly OR 97848 33433333333333333 3 33333433333333333 33334333333333333333 3 333 3433343333 333333 3 3 3 34333 33333 333 3 33433333333 3343333333333333 33 3343333333333333 33333333433333333 33 334333333333333 the most expensive homes are taxed at an overall lower rate than the least expensive homes. None of that makes any sense. Our best advice is to ind a house you can afford in the best neighborhood, with the best school district, and public amenities. That house is likely to go up in value faster than homes in not such great school districts. While you’d have a higher tax bill, our guess is the overall increase in value will make that bigger tax bill worthwhile. Julie Mansfield Smith Principal Broker/Owne r cuppercreeklandco@gmail.com cuppercreeklandcompany.com 333 3433343333 333333 3 33433 33333333333333 333 3343333333333333 3 33333333 33333333 3 333 333343333 33 3333 3 33334333333 33 333 333333433333 3333 3 333333333333333 3
