Post Race!

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Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker

Now it's 0, though. Paid off the house a few years back which was like getting a MASSIVE raise.

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The problem with paying off a house (although paying off a house is not an actual problem) is that it highlights just how much you get to pay annually in property taxes and home insurance. Most people don't realize how much those bills are because it is buried in their mortgage payments. With the mortgage gone, you still get to keep paying a 'house bill' that can equate to many, many thousands of dollars. Property taxes bite.

Brad!
Oh - if you've not gotten a copy of the newest book I released, you'll want to order a copy on Amazon. It is completely non-technical! https://amzn.to/3amcM4D. It's a book of puns!

That would be true, except that it isn't all that true for me.

One nice thing about the mortgage is that the bank managed the property taxes across months. The county that I pay to...barely manages at all. Auto pay? What's that?? Installments? Sure, we do installments...for a fee that is a few percentage points overall. My city has a great system. The county has a system that is obscure, obtuse, and obnoxious. However, the price isn't all that high.

Idaho pushed through a property tax exemption that went into effect the third year after I bought my house. That dropped my property taxes so far that it wasn't until just three years back that my property taxes got back above what I paid the first few years. The payment was part of the mortgage back then, but I still got the bills and tracked the costs. It must have been fun for the bank, though. They can't carry an overcharge for very long before they are required to refund the balance. So, the property taxes plummeted, which caught them by surprise, so I got a check back. Then they got that sorted, property taxes rose steadily...then the market crashed and property values tanked...so they had to send me another check. Then prices rebounded quickly, and they had adjusted too far down, so they came asking for the money back. And so on. Chase the bouncing ball.

Still, property taxes aren't all that high, here. They are rising steadily because housing costs are soaring, but they haven't gotten too bad, yet. They are less for a year than what I was paying for an average month of mortgage payments due to my over payment.

In the UK they're not bundled in together in the first place. We don't have property taxes as such. We used to have rates but they got replaced with a poll tax (now called community charge). And you can't get a mortgage without insurance but it's not bundled in, you simply have to prove you've got insurance when taking the mortgage.

Honestly, it sounds kinda weird to me that you guys would do that. (I guess it's a measure to help make sure those taxes get paid?).

Have I complained about the Something Went Wrong error in a while? The stupid error wan't even let a basic link be added without being flagged. There is security, then there is stupidity. I believe the SWW check has moved way too far past the later.


:eek:

I had posted a response that was on topic, but you'll never know what it is......

Did I actually use the phrase "on topic" in chit chat? Is it possible to be off topic in this thread?

Ha! How stupid is this...

If I enter the following URL by itself, the software will parse it and display it:

https://amzn.to/3amcM4D

If I try to enter it as a url behind the text "Punny or Not Book of Puns", the security check trips. Apparently it is a security violation to use "punny or not" on this site. How odd.

Um, don't we have rules against advertising? In fact, didn't you write them? :) Anything goes in ChitChat though.

I'm just trying it our with a random link



Edit> Well that worked. Try editing my post to see what it looks like. Is it exactly the same as yours?

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Originally Posted by FunkyDexter

In the UK they're not bundled in together in the first place. We don't have property taxes as such. We used to have rates but they got replaced with a poll tax (now called community charge). And you can't get a mortgage without insurance but it's not bundled in, you simply have to prove you've got insurance when taking the mortgage.

Honestly, it sounds kinda weird to me that you guys would do that. (I guess it's a measure to help make sure those taxes get paid?).

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and Community Charge (person based) got replaced with Council Tax (property based) based upon bands of property price.

Oops, yeah, I meant to say it got changed to Council Tax. If I remember right it was never actually called Poll Tax, Community Charge was the official name. But long story short - we got rid of a government and circled right back to rates.

Side Story: I got prosecuted for non payment of poll tax. I was also at the Trafalgar Square demo but left early. I was only aware of the trouble when I got back home and saw it on the news.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by FunkyDexter

I'm just trying it our with a random link

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I wonder if it is the amazon URL redirection logic tripping the security issue within the URL tag logic.

Test: Trying with Funky's URL: Punny or Not

Oh, advertising? Nah - just drawing your attention to something you might like...... That's my story and I'm sticking with it. (I don't work for the owners of the forum anymore, so I guess I risk a ban.... :D )

Our Property taxes were capped at the state level (Indiana). That was a good thing, but....
Then they allowed exceptions, so our Schools can override the cap and add their own taxes on top of that.
And they simple added other taxes like a storm-water fee/tax to cover the cost of water running into the drain in the road in front of my house and going to the retention pond in our neighborhood. Or the wheel tax that is simply a fee they added to the annual license plate tax you pay for each of your vehicles (the fee of which has an excise tax in Indiana that is many hundreds of dollars for the average vehicle. Within our state the politicians can flaunt that they 'capped' taxes and yet they still manage to get more and more of our money....through additional taxes and fees.

In the US, if you have a mortgage, the bank doesn't like the idea of you NOT paying property tax or insurance, so they cover both. Well, they're taking the money from you, but they handle paying them, so there's no chance of you not paying and losing the property, which is the collateral for the loan, of course.

I considered paying myself with small monthly set asides, such that when the tax bill came due, the money would already be there. I stuck with that for a few months, then realized I just didn't care all that much. My tax bill isn't so large that I can't just pay it. The real problem for me is that I never get a bill. The county doesn't care whether I miss a payment. In fact, they might prefer it, because interest begins to accrue, and at a rate that is a bit high, really. So, they are not all that motivated to let me know when I'm supposed to pay, and they won't let me set up an auto pay system, as I have for EVERY other bill. It kind of cramps my style to have to be around to pay bills, so everything that I can automate is automated....except that property tax bill.

I prefer to do an automated transfer from my checking to my savings which is specifically for paying my property taxes on my rental house (my house before getting married and moving into hers). I get the interest for my savings as property taxes are so high here in la that its like buying a small car every year and not getting to drive or even see it lol.

With the new refi going on our primary house Im trying to convince my wife for us to do the same and not use an impound account. Impound accounts are always a year behind as they "analyze" what the previous years taxes are and deduct that in 12 payments. Well then you are always short and they need to do an update. Too much trouble and letters sometimes requesting additional funds. PITA. Im fine paying myself so I can accurately pay taxes on time and in full.

Most impound accounts also impound homeowners insurance. Sure its required but its only like $100 a month but because they want to impound it it becomes an extra $400 a year in fees and stuff.

Our property taxes are going up again a few hundred bucks more and I just dont see people able to make both a high mortgage payment as well as a high tax payment. Your average small house here in our city is $533,200. Usually a 1,200 sq/ft 2-3 bed house. Mortgage payments $3,500+ a month. So paying off a house is really important if you want to be able to afford taxes in the future.

Yeah, housing is getting pretty insane.

When I bought, I thought that the house was overvalued, and expected to lose a bit of money in the short term. At the time, I paid $87,000 for a three bedroom 1.5 bath house of about 1,800 sq ft. Looking back on it, that was just crazy. The prices in Boise are going nuts, but even here in the suburbs, that house has roughly tripled in value.

Wow, $87K is less than the new Mustang GT500. I got my house for $200K back in 2003. 1,400 sq/ft 3 bed 2 ba. Now its $560K but only a few more years to go til its paid off.
My wifes house was purchased back in 13 for $530K 2 bed, 2 ba 1,700 sq/ft in a nicer area. Now its $700K but we are refinancing the $500K balance into a 15 year which is gonna be a killer payment :( but need to get that balance down even if for 5 years and then refi again into another 15 as we will have paid the balance down by $220K. This will make for a low very very manageable payment. Our house is the 2nd cheapest on the block too! Damn CA housing market!

The housing market in Boise has been driven up really fast, too. Some folks say it was Californians noticing how CHEAP the housing market was and buying it up for rental income. I'm sure there was a bit of that, but like all trends...there are many drivers.

In any case, it isn't so cheap there, now. Back when I was looking for a house (2003), I could have picked up a HUGE house with a separate mother-in-law apartment for $165K. It was more than I wanted, at the time, but I was in that crazy mindset that it was all already overvalued and would drop. Now I realize how myopic that might have been. Only might have been, though. On the plus side, there would be the potential for rental income to offset the mortgage...and the house had a turret. How cool would that be?

On the negative...the house had a turret. You don't see that on modern houses, so it gives you some idea how OLD that house likely was. I never took a look at the inside of that one, but the odds are pretty good that I'd still be fixing things to this day. One of the houses in that area that I did tour, didn't have any place in the kitchen for a refrigerator. It was so old that you had an ice box, at best. The current occupants had to keep the fridge outside. There also were no two rooms in the house on the same level. You went up or down one or two steps between each and every room. Still, the entry way was amazing. Dark wood paneling. I would have had to get some tweed and a pipe just to walk through that room.

Pfft! You guys don't know you're born.:p

Getting post race back to something a bit less serious..... a pun:

When is the best time to buy a bird? When they are going cheep!

What do you get if you sit on a razor blade? Arsenic.

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Originally Posted by RobDog888

Damn CA housing market!

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Amen. I am renting in Irvine right now; our neighbors townhouse just sold for like $750k. 1500sqft. We are only paying $2300/mo between three of us, which is a deal.