How much are your property taxes?
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| Fri, 02-17-2006 - 11:59am |
If you don't mind answering~ I just wanted to see what you homeowners are paying per year on property taxes (school,plus township/city) and do you escrow them into your mortgage or pay it yourself and earn interest? What state do you live in?
We are still (if you aren't familiar) weighing the options of buying vs. building. The taxes would be $5-6K/year on a newly built home costing $150K on 2 acres (of which parents are giving us if we build.) We would not need the full 20% down since the land is used as equity, so no PMI. Plus first 2 years of no school tax as an incentive to build. (live in PA near Pittsburgh)
On the other hand, they would be $3-$4K/year on homes priced $180-$220K. There aren't many nice houses with acreage for less than that, or we would have to spend much extra to remodel. We would need 20% down(don't have) or pay PMI.
Sorry if I got into this before, I just wanted to compare and see if you all are dealing with high taxes and if I should spend less on mortgage with higher taxes(and have a brand new home) or buy with a higher mortgage with PMI and lower taxes. We don't want to buy another dump and pile tons of money and work into it.
Thanks in advance,
NIcki

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Hello,
I live in the metro Atlanta area in GA. We have a 1500 square foot house on 1/8 of an acre and pay $1800 per year on property taxes. I recently applied for a homestead exemption, so that should save us $250 on the yearly taxes in the future. Part of our mortgage payment goes to escrow (no interest) to pay for the homeowner's insurance premium and property tax. It's an FHA loan so we pay PMI (low down payment). Original value of the house was $108,000, bought new 5 years ago. I will be very happy when we've knocked our mortgage balance down from 88k to 78k. Then we won't have to pay PMI when we refinance with a conventional 15 year fixed (if interest rates allow!).
Sincerely,
Lindsey Schocke
Sincerely,
Lindsey Schocke
Geeks on Tap: Mission Accomplished
Lindsey,
Housing prices in the Atlanta Metro area are really going up. If they've been going up in your neighborhood/town since you bought your home 5 years ago, you might be able to get your mortgage company to drop your PMI before doing the refi. We bought our home 8 years ago at $156K (North of Alpharetta), and last Spring, we had an appraisal done (at our own cost--$350), which showed that houses in our area were now selling in the low 200's, so we were able to just submit that appraisal to our mortgage company and have them drop our PMI without any other paperwork being filed. I think the wait time between submitting the appraisal and receiving the letter saying our PMI had been cancelled was about three months total.
Good Luck!
Pat :-D
Hello Pat,
Unfortunately, because I refinanced our mortgage Oct 2004. We have to pay PMI for a minimum of 5 years on our FHA loan and the refi date restarted the "clock" for that. Our house value has gone up. The next time we refinance PMI will be gone, but I'm not waiting 3 more years for it to be "automatically" cancelled. Thanks for the suggestion though!
Sincerely,
Lindsey Schocke
Sincerely,
Lindsey Schocke
Geeks on Tap: Mission Accomplished
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