We choose not to have money set aside in escrow when we pay our mortgage, so it's now time to make a semi-annual payment towards our property taxes. I am responsible and I just know to set $200 a month to cover this expense. But here is my concern: This morning I was writing the check and looking at the paperwork they sent us and I found out some potential bad news. The market value they are going to use for our 2013 taxes is $39,900 less than the market value they are using for the 2012 taxes. Are they expecting our house value to drop by nearly $40,000 in the next year? Or are they a little behind? They say our market value of our house for the 2012 taxes is $207,100 and the market value for the 2013 taxes will be $167,200. Right now zillow is saying our house is about $175,000. I don't know who to believe. I hope they are saying our house is already at $167,200 today and the taxes will reflect that next year and not that they think the house is actually worth $207,100 today and will still lose $40,000 in value in the months to come. So if our market value on our property taxes for 2012 is about $32,000 higher than Zillow is today or about 15%, will our Zillow value be 15% of next year's market value of 167,200? If that's the case, our house will only by worth $142,120 on Zillow by 2013. That thought just sickens me. That would mean our house will have lost about $100,000 in value in 5 years. I really hope our property taxes are just behind the times and we have already bottomed out!
If there is any good news, maybe our taxes will be less next year? The market value for 2013 is about 80% of the 2012 value, so let's hope the taxes will drop by that much! We pay about $192 a month right now, and 80% of that would be $153.60, so that would save us $38.40 a month. I'm not really counting it though because the market value from 2011 to 2010 decreased by $3,400 (which is about 2%) but our taxes actually increased by $84 a year.
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