The Historic District

Hello all,

My wife and I are in the process of purchasing our first old house. We are still negotiating the price, but have a mile long list of things that need (and a lot of wants) to get done. The house has had all the electrical, copper piping and heating stolen. There is a sunken corner in the back living room we need to address as well as sagging kitchen ceiling.

We have hit one snag that may hold us up from getting the house of our dreams and that is the property taxes.... The house taxes were originally listed as $3600 for 2200sqft, but some other real estate sites are showing $9600 for 3300sqft... possibly due to reassessment. Our realtor is verifying what the actual tax is before we proceed any further.
Has anyone ever had to deal with this? This may be a deal breaker for us as that annual tax amount is just too high.

This is the house we hope to eventually own:

My sister used to live in PA and I was appalled by her property taxes. That's one reason I stay in VA (besides the fact that I love my house); my property tax is only $747 annually. However, you said that all the electric, copper piping (plumbing) and heating elements were stolen. Is this house priced so extremely low that it is reasonable/affordable for you to be able to restore it enough to even live in, before doing any further restoration? Even if the property taxes are "only" $3600 now, they will probably go up anyway as you pull permits for your future restoration work.

Hi matchbookhouse,

Yes, the house is fairly cheap and we have priced out repairs we need to do and can get it move in ready without breaking the bank.

I'm not sure how reassessments work these days. We bought our current house in 1995 and in 1997 added a two car garage attached to it. The permit and resulting inspection was just a walk around, smile and they were gone. I don't remember what the increase in taxes were,... but I don't think they were too high. Currently we are at around $2000 for 1500sqft. The farmhouse taxes just seem crazy high.

Well that is a nice house, and I hope you are able to get it, but how big is the lot? You need to look up the tax assessed value, different from market value, of the whole property, I guess that is what the realtor is doing. Our house was also gutted at one time, but fortunately everything was replaced before it became a FannyMae foreclosure. We do have PVC plumbing.

I live in Florida, a homestead state. That means if you live in the house, you get 25k knocked off. Therefore low taxes. Our assessed value is very low, but we made a few improvements that may knock up the value. No visits from Mr Appraiser yet.

Welcome and good luck, hopefully you can work out a deal that helps.

Taxes here in VT are based on approximate market value at a given point in time. Obviously square footage comes into the mix with that, but so do all sorts of things like location, desirability and size of lot, and also the condition of the property. Fingers crossed that its the same where you are and the taxes don't jump that much.

PA, welcome to the District. Saw you have concerned about a sagging corner. Take a real close look at why. Is the foundation crumbling, a beam or corner post rotting out or some thing not so sinister. This type of problem could eat up a lot of cash unless your plan is to do it yourself. But then again we are old home folks, saving is what we like to do.

Hi PA1837,

I live in eastern PA also and property taxes can vary widely depending on the municipality (township)-- each has their own millage rate. The assessed value (in my experience) only changes slightly on a year-to-year basis unless additions or improvements are done. I've been told this is more for things like a new deck/porch or an addition, your realtor should be able to give you a better idea on if things like systems upgrades would increase the tax bill going forward.

My two cents is that I would suspect the larger tax figure is correct, but I'm pulling for you. I'm at $3,300/yr for 1,200 sf in Abington Twp but in the neighboring township (Cheltenham, which I believe has the #1 highest property taxes in PA) a similar home would have a $6,000-$7,000 bill. I saw plenty of houses during my home search over 2,000sf that were pushing or over $10k/yr.

It is alot, but it definitely depends on your particular municipality. My sense is still that most areas around here are lower taxes than NJ.

Good luck, keep us updated!

Sorry, slight correction to my response:
The slight change to the tax bill year-to-year isn't because of any change in the assessment value. It's due (in my case) to a slight increase in school tax-- it was like a $60 increase for the year. The assessed value itself didn't change.

If you do get the house, also be sure to look into the PA Homestead exclusion-- you'd probably receive a form in the mail about it, but you send inthe form to the state Revenue Dept and you become eligible for property tax relief based on how much revenue the state pulls in from casinos.

Thank you everyone for the input!

Nicholas,
The lot is just under 2 acres. It is surrounded by farmland and in a very peaceful setting. There is a Barn and a couple other smaller out houses.

Gothichome,
It looks as if the wall has slid off of the end of the beam and shifted down about 2 inches. I threw in some pictures showing the floor from top and below. I have a masonry contractor from Quakertown that works on older stonewalls/limestone repair who will come out to look at the foundation and give us a quote on sagging wall and kitchen ceiling repair. I am comfortable doing the kitchen ceiling myself but the wife wants to get that as part of the quote regardless.

homescribehistory,
Unfortunately I'm thinking it will be the larger amount of the listed tax prices too. The house is located in Monroe County, Chestnuthill twshp. I did read up and see that they had a homestead exclusion, but the Monroe county website is pretty faulty and doesn't load correctly.
I also read there is a HB/SB76 Property Tax Act that they are pushing to knock down our taxes... maybe we'll get lucky if something like this passes.

Attached pictures:
1st floor sinking


Basement floor sinking 1


Basement floor sinking 2


Basement floor sinking 3


View of the house as we drive up.

Wow..that last pic, talk about curb appeal!

But I hope this sinking situation is easily fixable. We also had to jack ours up and replace piers on one side.

...and about taxes: Wife was wondering why we didn't get the bill, so I went to our appraiser site, and our taxes this year are zero! This can't be right, I am afraid to call. Very low assessed value after exemptions.