Property Taxes

[Life201]

Oh my goodness! We are celebrating one year in our first home on August 15th!

And to celebrate, we received notice from our mortgage company that our house payment is increase by over $350 per month!

We have discovered that we’re $1200 under in our escrow account and our taxes increased so much, which led to the increase in payment.

We have 6, yes – I said 6, different taxing entities hitting us for property taxes! The school district taxes are a whopping 1.65% of every $100 of value on the home and land! That’s 3 times more than the other 5 entities put together!

We never realized how bad taxes could be until now – we had an idea, but not this bad.

Almost makes me want to go back to renting!

[lovebug]

i know what you mean. My taxes just went up again and then I just found out they will be going up another 90.00 as well. If I would have known this I would have stayed in AR or in MS at least out of Shelby County in TN. It is just terrible. You dont expect this to come up and if you are living alone like I am and only one income this really hurts you!

[missyk]

Teresa, this happened to us in 2002 but our note only increased $200. We called our mortgage company to see if we could set up some kind of arrangement, but they told us that unless they increase your note by more than 10% there's nothing you can do. Is $350 more than 10% of your note? If so I think they will let you pay the escrow back up over a two year period rather than a 1 year period. Might help a little if you're like we were with a very tight budget.
I swear property taxes in the Austin area have to be some of the worst in the country. Sometimes I think we'd be better if we did have a state income tax rather than sky-high property taxes.

[Life201]

Missy, the taxes for Williamson county and the city of Cedar Park aren’t too terribly bad, but Leander ISD is killing us. I found out yesterday that there was a $180 million school bond just passed to build new schools because this area is growing so fast!

I know education is important, but how does it take that much more to run the school district than it does the city or the county?

It’s so unbelievable! This is part of the reason we’re wanting to move so badly. Now we just have to sell our house!

[Deana]

Isn't that frustrating?? The same thing happened to us this year! Our escrow account was deficient of close to $2K, so our mortgage went up about $250. Luckily, we refinanced in July so our mortgage went down pretty dramatically. :D
I hate it though - I feel like the bank owns my butt. We budget for "X" amount every month for our mortgage, and they can just periodically say, no - here's your monthly payment now. Makes me mad.

[Kymness]

Originally posted by Life201
Almost makes me want to go back to renting!

Don't say that! We just put in a bid for our first house and we're freaked out enough by it! We've always rented. :eek:

[Kymness]

Originally posted by Life201
Missy, the taxes for Williamson county and the city of Cedar Park aren’t too terribly bad, but Leander ISD is killing us.

Okay this is good news. The house we just bid on is in Williamson County... but the ISD is Round Rock.

[Life201]

Don’t get me wrong, I love having our own home, but with the taxes going so high and the increase in our mortgage, then we got notice that daycare is going up…

Everytime you think you’re getting a little ahead, BAM! They hit you with something else!
:banghead:

Where are you guys thinking of moving to? What area of town?

[Life201]

Kymness, PM me with the address and I can tell you what the current Taxes are on the house you’re looking at!

[Kymness]

Originally posted by Life201
Where are you guys thinking of moving to? What area of town?

Round Rock... east side... over behind the Fuddrucker's off 35? Know where I'm talking about?

When we first moved up here to Austin we were living on Wells Branch... and nothing was out there. There were all the apartment complexes on Wells Branch, and the HEB out there and that was about it. Now it's like a whole little town up north! We were really surprised since it had been so many years since we ventured that far north. But we've also heard good things about Round Rock and so we decided to start looking out there... there's alot of nice houses for sale!

[Lisa]

Holy Cow that's a lot. :eek: At the end of last year we were also told our mortgage payment went up because not enough was in escrow for our taxes, but ours only went up $17.00. I don't think I could afford another 350.00!!! I am sure if we had to, we would have to do it. But I don't know if we'd be able to do anything else.
Sorry you have to go through this Teresa. Hopefully the bank will call you and said they have made a mistake. :)

[emben]

Ugh, taxes! We still haven't gotten our tax bill (due in May). Thanks, Indiana!