When Selling A Property, Who Is Responsible For The Property Taxes

Posted by Lorraine Ross on April 29, 2008

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Consumer Reports has published that property tax records show an error rate of 40% exists in estimating property taxes. (Nov.1992 v57 nil p.723) This has to do with the information written on you property record cards. With the decline in real estate values, finding lower priced homes to favorably compare against is a cinch!

The National Taxpayers Union writes that as many as 60% of all homeowners are over-assessed and not in line with their home value. (“How To Fight Property Taxes” 2004 p.1)
Click Here to request by email a free Property Tax Report to learn more about what legal loopholes to look at and ALL the specific ways you can do to lower your property taxes.

 

When you are selling a property and it is in the middle of a property tax year, the seller is responsible for the property taxes up to the day of closing after which time the remaining tax is due by the buyer. Now some people are very unaware of this fact when they close on a property and usually find out at the closing. The seller will bring a check along for their part of the taxes and the seller’s mortgage company receives the check, which is deposited in the buyer’s escrow account. This however is only one option presented for coving split property taxes.

Many times the seller’s mortgage company will keep the funds and send it directly to the property tax office at the appropriate time of year. This rare of course, but has been done in the past. It all depends on the new mortgage company for the buyer and the mortgage company for the seller. The proper way many believe is to give the monies to the buyer’s mortgage lender and have them send the check to the property tax office by passing the intermediary, which is the buyer. This ensures the buyer’s mortgage lender that the money is indeed going for the property taxes.

You might wonder how they divide up property taxes and for a year. The mortgage lender of the seller will take the total property taxes owed from the past year and divide this by twelve months. After finding a monthly amount owed every month, they then will divide the number of days in the month of the closing that the buyer had the property in their name by the monthly amount. This will give a prorated property tax amount owed by the seller. The same is done to calculate the remainder of the months for the buyer.

Who Receives The Lottery Credit If There Is One

The lottery credit is usually awarded to the buyer. If the lottery credit is smaller than the previous year, you may have to add some money to your escrow account to pay the property taxes. If the lottery credit is smaller, you may see a small refund coming your way. This amount however is never very much, it could be as high as fifty dollars or as low as five dollars that you would owe or receive a refund for unless there are other circumstances you are unaware of with the taxes.

You never have to worry about the property taxes when a property change takes place, the mortgage lenders would not allow the seller to forget about their share. There are officers of the mortgage company that have special jobs and one is the property tax issues and insurance as well.

Your first year of property taxes is always your best, it can change after that, especially if they raise your taxes after a sale of the property and you are not escrowing enough money to cover the raise. Your mortgage company made alter your monthly payment to cover this issue.