Property taxes

Who else is getting murdered by property taxes? I live in Lake County, IL, live in an average house in a middle-class neighborhood and I pay almost $10,000 in annual property taxes.

What's even scarier is Lake County is just #15 on the top counties in term of median property taxes paid. Link (Sorry for you folks who live in NY and NJ.)

[Ima saver]

My taxes doubled last year from $1300 to $2200. I have a 3200 square foot house, plus an extra garage with eff. apartment. So, I don't think that it too bad.

Thanks for kicking a guy while he's down.

[DebbieL]

Wow, property taxes here are nowhere near that. Our housing is stupidly inflated right now (more than doubled in past 5 years). The average house is going for over $570K and the average household income here is low 60K range. Ridiculous! The property taxes are probably $2000-$3000 on the average single family house. Here in Canada we pay high income taxes though. Do you live in an area where there aren't state income taxes, etc? I've heard that the governments get their ounce of flesh one way or another. Places with lower income taxes tend to have high property taxes, etc.

[plumpossum]

Ok, I should duck before saying this, because I have a feeling some of you in high COL areas may throw things at me...

I pay about $175/month or $2100/yr. Our county has a program where they invest your monthly payment and at the end of the year if there is any gain on the investment, they credit it toward your first payment of the year (I've only been on it for about 8 months, so I'm not sure how significant the difference is). Our house is 1008 square feet (but that doesn't include the full basement, which doubles our home size), and the most recent value was $118,000, in 2005- however our lot is on the large side for our town at a little over 1/3 of an acre.

Sure, my property taxes are great, but I live in Ohio so I'm paying taxes on everything else imaginable too, including a separate school tax through RITA, sales tax, state tax, tax on my license plates (which adds up to more than the plates themselves!), and my favorite: tax to dine in at a restaurant rather than get carry out.

[Joan.of.the.Arch]

Interesting link, D_A. Everyone can go to the homepage and click on the map in the right hand column to get data and articles about one's own state.

Now, brace yourself---don't choke, but I only have to set aside $1030 for my city residential property taxes this year. However, the state also collects property taxes and that will be --let's see, adding it up-- oh yeah, $595. Some other public fees are paid monthly and, oddly, are based in part on the characteristics of one's real estate.

I live in St Louis, MO in a mixed but largely low to low middle class neighborhood in a smaller than average home. Zillow.com at one time estimated my house is in the lower 12% of the area, in terms of value. That is probably a good guess.

For me, the property taxes seem moderate. But for people of lower income than me (most in the area) with bigger houses than me (again, most in the area), I imagine property taxes do feel like murder.

[ginene]

Wow that is really alot! I had the nerve to complain that mine went from $2600 to $3200. I'm in MD and the house is $230,000

Thanks for the replies.

Originally Posted by DebbieL

Do you live in an area where there aren't state income taxes, etc?

Illinois charges 3% income tax, which is not unreasonable, IMHO. And believe me I'm more than willing to pay my fair share of taxes. But, &^%#, this is a ridiculous amount to pay. Other people I know who live in the area complain too, but no one knows what to do about it.

A small silver lining is that I have 2 young kids who will eventually use the public school system so at least I feel like I'm getting a decent benefit from it (70% of the property taxes is school taxes). If I didn't have kids, I'd really feel like I was getting the shaft.

[pearlieq]

My uncle is in Lake County and taxes are so bad he's considering moving. I feel for you!

We're in Kendall County and we're doing OK. I actually challenged our assesor and got ours reduced. We're still paying about $5,800 for a house worth not quite 300k, but I know others are hit worse.

[Ima saver]

Oh devil, I did not mean to kick you while you are down. I could never afford to pay those high taxes. My house is valued at over 1/2 million. The county we live in, has the 2nd lowest tax base in the state of georgia!

[moneybags]

A small silver lining is that I have 2 young kids who will eventually use the public school system so at least I feel like I'm getting a decent benefit from it (70% of the property taxes is school taxes). If I didn't have kids, I'd really feel like I was getting the shaft

Hate to burst your bubble (fellow Lake County-ian here), in our school district there is constant cutting of the budget, even though we pay huge taxes. Our high school will be cutting more programs next year, possibly shortening the day, and they already charge fees for participation in sports, band, etc.

Originally Posted by moneybags

Hate to burst your bubble (fellow Lake County-ian here), in our school district there is constant cutting of the budget, even though we pay huge taxes. Our high school will be cutting more programs next year, possibly shortening the day, and they already charge fees for participation in sports, band, etc.

So why does no one do anything about this? If they're cutting programs, then they should be cutting the taxes. Who are the politicians responsible for this? The school board? The county board? The state? Blago? Argh.

[boefixepa]

This is what I have discovered about property taxes.....that is generally where the schools get their money. Mine is going up $300-$400 this years, and it's all going to the school. This year I am paying $1,1?? next year $1,5??.00. So I'm not in as bad of shape as you are, but that's a nice percentage increase. However if you live in a city up the road 30 minutes, there's is going down. Why? Commericial property!!! I saw this same thing in a suburb I lived in. We lived out away from the city where everyone wanted to live, but no one wanted to work. So there were lots of families, and this kids. Those kids need schools. If an areas as a good business base they can get a big chunck of money there and what they have to pass on to the home owners is not too bad, but if the commercial base is not large enough (and they can only squeeze so much out of them) then they musy pass that cost onto the other property owners. It's a trend I've seen in a few areas in which I live and it might be a problem where you live to. Just something to consider. I may not like the Wal-Mart and the Stauffers plant, but I keep my mouth shut! I don't want any portion of their tax bill!! Oh, and the city up the freeway...well the Mirco plant...it pretty much covers the entire cities budget for the year...

[Diolla]

Wow, I really feel for all of you.

My house is appraised at $34,000 (no I didn't miss a zero) and property taxes on it are about $500 a year.

[moneybags]

So why does no one do anything about this? If they're cutting programs, then they should be cutting the taxes. Who are the politicians responsible for this? The school board? The county board? The state? Blago? Argh.

I don't pretend to be politically knowledgeable, but our district tried to raise our taxes to meet the amount needed to meet the "budget", but our voters didn't pass the referendum. I don't know exactly how it works, but they do projections that show when their money will run out, etc. Based on that info, they know they don't have enough money to fund everything going forward, so they need to cut things out. The school board has a big (if not complete?) say in what gets cut.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

I pay a ton too.

[bjl584]

Wow, I must lucky. I live in West Virginia and have a 3 bedroom house with a two car detached garage and an additional barn on 5 acres of property. My property taxes for the entire year are around $680. Plus I pay personal property tax on my vehicles. That is an additional $180 for the year. I don't have any seperate school taxes or local wage taxes. Just state and federal.

[katwoman]

With all due respect to Chicagoland homeowners---I find that we all pay the sort of property taxes that our most unsophiticated neighbor is willing to accept.

Cook county assessors office has a great website where you can plug in an addy and up comes a picture of your house. You can do a search for other properties of like kind and get an idea of what your neighbors are paying for similar properties. I can't tell you how many times I've looked up friends properties (and I've been to their homes so I know what improvements or not have been made) only to find they are paying higher taxes than many of their closest neighbors! All because they accept what the tax bill calls for. Once I pointed this out to a close friend and guess what? They still did nothing about it! I just don't get it.

[LuckyRobin]

Not me. I pay less than $800 a year. In fact our property taxes went down this year when we finished paying off the last school bond. I have an 1800 square foot home on 1/3 acre. We have no state income tax, either. But we do have 8.5% sales tax on everything but food (except junk food and restaurants have sales tax). And our gas tax is 37.5 cents per gallon. It all evens out, I expect.

[MonkeyMama]

I guess,but we have insane taxes on sales, income, gas and property! How is that even?

Actually property taxes are not so bad in California if you never move. They pretty much get locked in (they can raise nominally every year but not with true value of property since then no one could keep up).

But lord knows why voters keep passing school bonds that increase our assessments. Obviously throwing money at the schools has solved nothing but they keep passing passing passing. Plus the politics are insane when it comes to the school boards around here.

& hell if I knew that property taxes would make it too cost prohibitive to move when we bought our home in 2001. Yeesh. Glad we went with our long-term home. We'd be priced out on property taxes alone.

Our property taxes are pretty much 1% what we paid for the home. we paid the same for our little slice of condo as we do for our big home because we paid the same price for both. But we have a ton of bonds/assessments against this home - around $1k/year and growing. Mostly school bonds for schools that don't even exist (the politics...)