The Crotchety Old Men Podcast
Unlocking Property Tax Secrets: Your Guide to Assessments, Appeals, and Saving Money
Ever wondered if you're paying too much on property taxes and if there's a legal way to freeze them for years? I've been there, and my journey through the property tax appeal process was a revelation that could put money back in your pocket. On this episode of the Crouchy Old Man Podcast, we strip away the complexity surrounding property tax assessments, sharing insider tips and personal tales that highlight the potential savings hidden in plain sight. Discover how timely appeals can lead to significant financial relief, why reassessing after neighborhood changes is crucial, and learn to navigate the system with ease, whether you're working with an assessor's office or tackling tax payments solo.
Ever wondered if you're paying too much on property taxes and if there's a legal way to freeze them for years? I've been there, and my journey through the property tax appeal process was a revelation that could put money back in your pocket. On this episode of the Crouchy Old Man Podcast, we strip away the complexity surrounding property tax assessments, sharing insider tips and personal tales that highlight the potential savings hidden in plain sight. Discover how timely appeals can lead to significant financial relief, why reassessing after neighborhood changes is crucial, and learn to navigate the system with ease, whether you're working with an assessor's office or tackling tax payments solo.
The Crouchy Old man Podcast is not a registered investment legal or tax advisor or a broker dealer. All investment financial opinions expressed by or on the Crouchy Old man Podcast are from the personal research and experience of the owner of the site and are intended as educational material. Although best efforts are made to ensure that all information is accurate and up to date, occasionally unintended errors and misprints may occur. Before you invest or make any investment based decisions, consider your own personal circumstances.
Speaker 2:You should do your own research and seek advice from a financial professional the Crouchy Old. Man Podcast is not a registered investment legal or tax advisor or broker dealer. The Crouchy Old man Podcast is not a registered investment legal or tax advisor or broker dealer.
Speaker 4:The Crouchy Old man Podcast is not a registered investment legal or tax advisor or broker dealer. The Crouchy Old man Podcast is not a registered investment legal or tax advisor or broker dealer. The Crouchy Old man Podcast is not a registered investment legal or tax advisor or broker dealer. The Crouchy Old man Podcast is not a registered investment legal or tax advisor or broker dealer.
Speaker 3:The Crouchy Old man Podcast is not a registered investment, legal or tax advisor or broker dealer.
Speaker 4:The Crouchy Old man Podcast is not a registered investment legal or tax advisor or broker dealer. The Crouchy Old man Podcast is not a registered investment legal or tax advisor or broker dealer. The Crouchy Old man Podcast is not a registered investment legal or tax advisor or broker dealer. The Crouchy Old man Podcast is not a registered investment legal or tax advisor or broker dealer. The Crouchy Old man Podcast is not a registered investment legal or tax advisor or broker dealer.
Speaker 2:The Crouchy Old man Podcast is not a registered investment legal or tax advisor or broker dealer. The Crouchy Old man Podcast is not a registered investment legal or tax advisor or broker dealer the Crouchy Old man.
Speaker 4:Podcast is not a registered investment legal or tax advisor or broker dealer. The.
Speaker 2:Crouchy.
Speaker 4:Old man Podcast is not a registered investment legal or tax advisor or broker dealer.
Speaker 3:The Crouchy Old man Podcast is not a registered investment legal or tax advisor or broker dealer. The Crouchy Old man Podcast is not a registered investment legal or tax advisor or broker dealer.
Speaker 2:The Crouchy Old man Podcast is not a registered investment legal or tax advisor or broker dealer. The Crouchy Old man Podcast is not a registered investment legal or tax advisor or broker dealer processes as Paul was alluding to. Did you have to physically go down to the County Assessor's Office, or was this something that you could start the process or do the process with from a computer at home?
Speaker 4:Okay, well, that's good question. That's probably a good place to start. Okay, so I've been in my house for 30 years and when I first purchased the home, a good friend of mine first thing he told me was you should appeal your property tax. So basically he helped me write a ladder, basically. So let me back a little bit. You're going to get an assessment every year, which is a document, and it'll say this is not a, this is not a bill. But you know, the interesting thing about it is, if your taxes are impounded every, every month when you pay your note meaning that you pay your property tax payment to the mortgage company and they in turn send it to the property department of equalization at the end of the year, that does not Stop you from appealing your property tax.
Speaker 4:A lot of people say well, I don't pay my property tax. You know they, they're paid automatically, but you still have the ability to Peel them. In my situation, I don't have my property tax in Pounded or escrowed by the mortars company. I pay them separately and that's just a mean of you pay 20% down, you have a Anything. You owe less than 80% on the value of your home, that's. But that's a different subject, but anyway, stick sticking to the subject. You know you, you get a letter, you get a notification, you know this is what you pay last year, this is what you paid this year. If you're lucky, nothing changes or if it changes slightly.
Speaker 4:Like I said, the first year I appealed them, I won the peel, which basically froze my taxes for the next three years. And that's one of the advantages of appealing your taxes that once you appeal and win, or lose Meaning if they go up or they go down, you still freeze them at that level for the next three years. For so, for those that Don't think there's a benefit, there is a benefit In in appealing your taxes, you know, every three years, because of the fact that they will now be frozen. So I've probably said, like I said, been in my house for 30 years, I've probably appealed them at least four or five times. So and you can do this, you can do it every year. But you have to keep in mind, if you do it every year, if your taxes go up, your appeal that you won, the previous leader or the, the new assessment, the previous year will be erased and whatever they decide, that year will take its place. So you have to be careful about doing it every year.
Speaker 4:I would. What I do is, like I said, every three years and that's when it expires. So, long story short, I appealed it three years ago, so it renewed last year in 2023. My next-door neighbor Made significant improvements in their property which affected my property tax, and that's what really? To the tune of a, probably about a, I'd say about a 60% increase in my tax quick question how did that affect your property Before?
Speaker 2:I mean that your neighbor didn't sell his home or anything, just by them adding value to their, their property.
Speaker 4:No, I sold it. Oh, they sold it. I'm sorry. Yeah, they saw it. Yeah, when you sell your properties, there's a you know, there's an automatic Thing that got that happens, which which basically says now the value of the properties of the carriander Comparables in your neighborhood have changed because the sales value has changed. So you know that's what happened. He made a significant improvement. Property taxes went up. So and it was.
Speaker 4:I was at the end of the three years, so I appealed them. Like I said previously, I had appealed them by just by letter, I think. Three years ago. When I appealed it, we settled on an amount which was which was acceptable me for the increase, which was lower than the crease they projected. I agreed to it. I didn't have to go to the actual appeals board, but this year was the for 2023 was the first time I actually Disputed it. I prepared comps cinema letter. They sent me a say. It basically sent me a note and said well, based on your information, we deny your appeal, but you have the opportunity to come to the board and appeal again, which I took that option up, actually got a date time and you have it because of coven.
Speaker 1:I guess they have an option.
Speaker 4:You can do it on zoom, but I wanted to actually go down, so went down to the board of equalization and, interesting, to my surprise, the board is actually made up of four people, three of those people which are residents, just like us. They've been trained to look at property tax and and make recommendations to the actual person that works for the city on you know what, if your appeal is acceptable or not. So I thought that was pretty interesting. I mean, so you're basically sit in a board of your peers Homers, homeowners just like you are, and they serve a particular term that, like I said, they take classes, they're educated and what they're, what they're looking at, but it's a it's a board of your peers, which I thought was pretty interesting.
Speaker 3:I got another question for you, george. When you, when you consider the fact that you want to, you want an appeal for whatever the reason and let's say, let's say there's two or three or four other people in your neighborhood that is Looking at the same situation you are looking at to Offer a basis for an appeal, is there an advantage or a an Opportunity for more than one person to come to make an appeal, making it a little stronger for the appellates?
Speaker 4:Well, here again, I Recommend that everybody appeal their property tax, you know, every three years, because, here again, like I said it, it locks in that rate For the next three years. So in my, like I said, in my situation, I had, I had a very Affordable property tax which I thought was Matched my property for the last three years and, like I said, the one I got in 2023 was Probably 60% higher. So there was an advantage to me by doing that because it probably, if I hadn't appealed them three years ago, they probably would have gradually gone up.
Speaker 3:But the question.
Speaker 4:Let me, let me, let me finish. I'm gonna ask you your question. Okay, okay, I'm not gonna do the political thing, but I say that just because I want people to understand that you should appeal your tax now. Now, should you appeal them in a mass group, you know? Should I take every neighbor in the neighborhood down and say let's go down here and to the board? Personally, I don't know if that's an advantage or not. I've never done that. I'm I've never investigated that. But when you appeal your property, tax it and you do a comparable, which is one of the methods that you can use. It's based on the size, it's based on the number of bedrooms, number of bathrooms in your home compared to, you know, the higher value, the higher value property. So One of the things that I used in my comparables was the fact that my house was a lot smaller than the house Houses in my neighborhood.
Speaker 1:I don't have a basement.
Speaker 4:I have not done any significant Upgrade. So because normally when you're gonna sell your house, what do you do? You upgrade the kitchen, you upgrade the bathrooms, so that's kind of let you get away with saying your house was smaller. I mean here. Here again, numbers don't lie. You know, my house could be the same size, square footage wise, but if they have a basement, that's probably adding another 12,000, 1200 square feet to their home, which allows that home to be larger than mine. So a piece of basement makes a significant difference.
Speaker 2:Okay, let's go back to this valuation piece because, again, there's a decod at least I got the decod of me here. On the one hand, you buy real estate, especially a home, but real estate in general, with the hope that that property is going to appreciate in value. That's what you want, I thought, is that for your home to go from a half million dollars to become worth a million dollars Someday, or at least 650, 700 thousand. And that does two things for you as a homeowner. Number one, to higher the valuation If you're looking to refinance, because most people, unless they're gonna go buy another house, buy another house, buy another house, which is not usually this thing happening with residential Is that you're gonna stay in that house until you pay it off and all that sort of good stuff.
Speaker 2:And there's a lot of people out here right now. There's this cash poor but equity rich. You're sitting in a house that's paid off, it's appreciated, it's gone from 250,000, let's say, to 500,000. It's doubled in value over the past 10 years. Now, true to your point, you could go down and you could argue to a point I want to reduce my taxes. The properties next door selling for $3,000, $4,500, raising your property up. That's an opportunity for you to take some more money out of your house, your property and invest it in other areas because of that equity. As far as doing a refi, if your property's value you go down and you dispute this and you want the valuation to be lower, seem like you, it's kind of like you shoot yourself in the foot and I might not be putting that clear enough. But, george, you understand it enough. You're a broker, so help me out here with my own.
Speaker 4:I mean, gary, that's an excellent point because the person, that's just the normal person that owns a piece of property, probably thinks the same way, but there's a separation there. I mean when you go to refinance your home they never ask you what the tax value is. See, the tax assessment is based on 40% of the value of your home.
Speaker 2:Just a second, so I want you to make sure I'm clear. I'm not talking about the tax part, I'm talking about valuation. Now because, yeah, because the taxes is based upon the value, right?
Speaker 4:Taxes based on 40% of the value.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So what you're actually going down when you dispute in those taxes that, hey, you charge me more taxes, my value is not that high, my value is lower than that.
Speaker 4:Right.
Speaker 2:Right, right, okay, all right, that's what we're talking about.
Speaker 4:But what I'm saying is, when you go to the bank to refinance your home, they never ask you what the tax value of your home is.
Speaker 2:I know they don't. That's not the issue. You go to the bank, it's based on value, Right. When you go to complain about your taxes being high, it's based upon what? The value. I'm still talking value here, I'm not talking taxes. Okay, taxes are derivative. It was a derivative of the value, Right? So if the value is up, of course the taxes is gonna go up, Right. But you just say, oh no, no, no, I don't wanna pay higher taxes, I want my taxes to be lower. Well, how are they gonna lower them? By lowering the value, Right. Well, to my point about refinancing Right.
Speaker 2:If the value has gone from 250 to 500,000, then your taxes went from 5,000 to 7,000. But you wanna get a refinance. I'm just gonna use simple numbers 80% of 500,000 is 400,000. But if you go down there and say I want my taxes to be lower, my house is not worth 500,000, this only worth 400. Well, look what happened to your equity 80% of 400,000 is now 320. You just left $180,000 on the table of equity. Is that $180,000 worth? I mean the taxes a couple of dollars. You're saving taxes worth 180 grand in equity.
Speaker 4:That's fucking Okay. Listen to me, gary. When you appeal your property, when you go to refinance your home or take equity out of your home, they don't ask you what you pay on taxes. These two parties don't talk to each other. There's no correlation between what your property tax evaluation is and how much your equity is on your house. When you're talking to the bank of whoever, they don't look and say, okay, well heck, you only pay. Your evaluation on your taxes is only X.
Speaker 2:They look at the cops.
Speaker 4:You just mentioned. Well, your cops don't change.
Speaker 2:The cops don't change Gary, why wouldn't they change? Why wouldn't, they change, gary. Well, you just gave an example. The cops change all the time. They change all the time depending on what's going on in the neighborhood. Yeah, but the-.
Speaker 3:I mean.
Speaker 2:Gary you just said the neighbor. Okay, go ahead.
Speaker 4:The cops don't change based on my property tax If I go down-.
Speaker 2:The cops change based on value. Correct your neighbor's house went up and down.
Speaker 4:No, no, no, no. Cops change based on sales.
Speaker 2:And sales value. Sales Still talking value.
Speaker 4:Okay. But, you're not-.
Speaker 2:What you said. Your neighbor sold his house. He's major, okay. Well, go ahead.
Speaker 4:So what I'm trying to get you to understand, gary, is when I go down, if I go down and pill my property tax and they lower the value of my home and I go the next day to the Bank of America and say I wanna get a refinance because my home is worth X, no, they don't say, well, what did you pay in property tax? They don't even ask what you'd pay in property If the all. They still look as the guy next door, so his house for X amount, what doesn't change, and Based on the fact that my house is next door, it should be worth this amount they don't ask you about. There is two separate items, all together.
Speaker 2:Let's go on to another question. I think you misunderstood my question. I know full well. When you go down to get a loan, you don't ask you about your property taxes. Oh, that's not okay, I'm talking about the comp Parables, or the valuation of the property, in order for you, let's see if we can agree on this. Okay, your taxes are based upon the value of your home. Is that a true statement or no?
Speaker 4:That's the true statement.
Speaker 2:Okay. So if that's the case, the only time about taxes are gonna go up to the point where you want to appeal them is if your property Value has increased. Would that be a true state, correct? Okay, if that point, at that point in time, you decided you wanted to refinance Because everything else going around in the world is favorable interest, raising all that job. Right now you got a higher valuation, which means you can get more money right. Right, right, right, if I don't go down there.
Speaker 4:Basically okay, okay, okay here, Stay right there. Okay, so stay right there. So if, if, you've, you've, you basically said that the value of my home is has gone up, and I'm gonna go and I'm gonna refinance it, okay, Mm-hmm. What would make that mortgage company or that bank say that you have appealed your property tax? So then why am I not answering your question?
Speaker 2:Because I'm talking about Valuation, not taxes. But I'm talking about, and I think, where it's gotten muddy, that where taxes are derived from, they derive from valuation. Let's stop there. We just agree with that. But not a little valuation part. And if my neighbor just sold his home and, and for 650, and I'm thinking miles worth 550, that value brings that, that we call that comp in that area, that raises all the houses in that area right If they're the same size, same square footage, blah, blah, blah. Would that be a fair statement, cause of those comps or no?
Speaker 4:You said this raised it based on the fact that he sold his house at a certain price.
Speaker 2:Yes, at a higher price. Yeah, yeah, okay, so that comp is gonna be what I'm gonna use anyway if nobody else use that, I'm gonna use that come walk. I'm trying to get more money without selling a house, or or or refinancing. But right now I'm refinancing.
Speaker 4:All right, now nothing changes that nothing changes that, okay.
Speaker 2:So now if I was to go down to the county assessor's office?
Speaker 4:totally separate issue I.
Speaker 2:Get that. I Don't want to pay that, so doesn't the value of my house. How do they gonna reduce my taxes if they don't reduce the value? Maybe that's the question I should ask so here yeah here again, you, your.
Speaker 4:Your objective is to prove to them why your house is not valued at that.
Speaker 2:My house is less expensive than the one that this comp see is more expensive. I'm trying to do is appeal to you. Hey, my house is not worth that. I don't have a basement?
Speaker 4:I don't have a basement. I didn't upgrade my bathrooms, you know no. So basically my house is not worth 60% more than it was three years ago because I haven't done these improvements.
Speaker 2:Exactly so let's stay there. So now I want to refinance my house. Right could have got this higher comp because the banks and everybody else all lenders gonna look at comparables.
Speaker 4:Correct same comparables the same variables, exactly, but since You're answering your own question.
Speaker 2:So my, my value okay, I just need to make this clear, though. So my value did not decrease, although I went down and told them to decrease my taxes.
Speaker 4:That's what I thought. I thought I answered the first time.
Speaker 2:How do they? Basically, just because you don't have a, okay, they can't even use that comp if it's not a comparable To your house. Hell, you can't compare a house with a basement to one that doesn't have one. That's ridiculous. Nobody does that. That's not a that's not a true comparable. They have to throw that out anyway.
Speaker 4:Not necessarily true when they shoot it, throw it out. No, I mean when you're talking about selling. And that's funny because I talked to a buddy of mine yesterday who basically said that the property Next door to him just sold, and these are million dollar homes, sold For more than his house. He bought his house for two years ago and it's got a smaller lot and it's a smaller house. So the market drives the sale of homes Based on supply and demand, as you know. But when you talk about. Excuse me.
Speaker 2:I thought we should make a comparison to like, like property. That's only that's. When you do a comparison, comparables for comps for any buyer or seller of real property, you get you doing it with property of like kind Square full understood, understood, understood.
Speaker 4:But the market still drives the cost of the property. Now it's up to the bank to say whether they're gonna loan you that amount of money for that particular house at that particular time, knowing that the house next door you know his is a higher value than your home base. She's, like you said, based on those comps. Okay, and if and if that house does not appraise based on the comparables, then right, that buyer has to come up with a difference in the payment. But that's totally up to the bank. But what I'm trying to get you to understand, based on your question, is what does the city or the board of equalization Decides? Is the fair market value of your property, which is gonna be 40%, of which they'll take 40% of that and that'll be your property tax has nothing To do with you. Finance refinancing your house or what you sell your house for is two separate things. Now, if the bank or the city, the board of equalization, comes back and says sorry, mr Crumley, you know your house is Comparable to that house next door that just sold for X and no, we're not going to lower your property tax, yeah, I mean, there's nothing else that you can do. I mean you probably appeal it again to somebody else, but it's still. It's still going to be based on their assessment and your documentation, documentation, whether they're going to change that. Now when I say our one, my appeal. They didn't lower my taxes back down to what it originally was. They still raised my taxes, but they didn't, I'm sorry. They still raised the value of my home, which affected my taxes, but they didn't raise it as much as they had initially said because of the documentation, documentation that I provided. But I mean, I want to make a strupe perfectly clear in answering your question and because that's that's funny, because someone else asked me the same thing with George, if you went down and appeared, your taxes, you know, here again the objective is your hot, you want your house to be worth more. But remember, here again, your house is only worth more if you're trying to do something, take money out of it or sell your home, because on paper and here goes back to the evaluation of taxes that's what you're dealing with is on paper. So I'm not trying to take any money out, I'm not trying to do those. So on paper, basically, I want the lowest value, that lowest valuation I can possibly get and that's gonna be based on the documentation. But, like you said, when I'm trying to sell it, I'm trying to get the highest Evaluation so I can get as much money out of it as possible.
Speaker 4:Those may seem like they don't agree, but it's two separate pop processes, two separate departments. They don't talk to each other and one really has no, no bases on the other. Like I said, when you sell your house, no one's gonna go back and look at your property tax bill and so oh, wait a minute you only paid X number of dollars on your property tax. Therefore, you can't sell your house for this amount because your valuation is not that amount. It doesn't. They don't look at it like that. They look at like you said. They go and look at the cop next door and said, well, this guy's house is comparable to yours, so, yeah, you can sell it for this amount.
Speaker 2:Good stuff, good stuff. What do you think about PC? You're quietly.
Speaker 3:I think I think George kind of Got us started. We having a guest coming in in a couple of weeks, they could kind of help us top this Conversation off, so I'd be curious to see what he has to say. But look, sound like George kind of has this process on lock, if you ask me.
Speaker 2:Well, it's definitely something that people need to know. That number one is sure they can do. You know, probably lock folks out here paying taxes, grumbling and mumbling or either losing their properties worst case scenario Because their inability to pay taxes when they didn't know Either the process for going down or appealing them or what have you, or they didn't know what things that could affect their home and why their taxes went through. To ask for them to know why your taxes went up. So I think the conversation seems that what George has brought to us today is that hey, number one, awareness. Did you know, okay, that when your property taxes are increased, you there's something you can do, you can participate in your own rescue? You may or may not always win the war, but at least need to know that there's a battle going on and there's some things that's in your favor that you could utilize to minimize or he probably you know reduce or whatever those taxes. So I think that point was very, very Thank you, george, for bringing that out.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I just want to add a couple more things. When you buy your home, the first thing you need this is, if it's going to be your main residence, the first thing you need to do look at is your homeowners exemption. You get a homeowners exemption if you live in that home. You don't get a homeowners exemption if you're buying it for investment property, you know, but you need to make sure that you get that. Your real estate agent should tell you about that. Make sure you file that paper Because that's a significant savings off of what you will on your your property tax every year.
Speaker 4:Once you turn a certain age I think it's 62 you can also they're depending on what city and what state you live in. You can also get exemptions if you're if you're disabled veteran or if you're disabled. There's exemptions that you can get from property taxes, but there are a lot of Exemptions out there. Florida has a lot of exemptions, like I think. When you're in Florida you don't have to pay the because in your property tax there's there's taxes for schools, there's things like that that are in your tax. So obviously, when you get to a certain age, you know, you know necessarily want to be paying for the area.
Speaker 4:Exactly so there's exemptions for that. So I say all to say is check your city, state, board of Equalization and find out what exemptions you're entitled to as a homeowner so that you take advantage of everything. Because, like I say here, you know, here again, model on the crotchet old man is pay is less taxes, pay less interest, as you possibly can. So here again, it's knowledge is power, knowing the law, knowing what you, what you're enabled, what you're able to do as a homeowner. Because you know I can say we talk and we push all the time by a house. You know, be a homeowner, but you need to know that those are. There's things that come along with that, and I'm in it with this last thing. They incurred this. The Board of Equalization encourages you to Go through this process. That's why they lock it in for three years, because they want you to do.
Speaker 2:They want. Why do you suppose that is?
Speaker 4:because, because of what kind of things that I talked about, they don't really have enough eyes and ears and feet on the ground to go around and assess the exact actual value of your home. So you as a homeowner need to be able to go forward, have a process that go forward and say, hey look, oh, wait a minute, wait a minute, my property is not really valued at this. So it's almost like a blind Assessment. I mean, they don't have enough feet on the ground to actually go out and assess every home. So there, it's almost like they're depotizing you to say to come forth and say, hey, my property is not worth this amount. It's not, it's the valuation is too high, I so that's why.
Speaker 2:Well, the thing is, as we all know, your school district, your school tax schools are supported through property taxes, correct, and so if you're in a neighborhood, that's one thing you kind of have to watch, though, because if you're in a neighborhood and everybody's trying to keep a lid on the value of those properties, what in essence they do is that they take away some of the money that could be going toward funding the schools, and so now those funds have to come from some other sources, because if they're not coming from the property tax, where are they going to come from?
Speaker 2:So there's a two-sided source to this whole process. So we're, on the one hand yeah, makes sense, you want to say that taxes are a deduction, okay, you want to say that, and you want to pay a few little taxes as necessary? I get that. But the flip side is that how else are you going to? Where are those dollars going to come from for city services? Where are those dollars going to come from for the schools and all those type of things, fire and stuff like that? So, in that particular county or that particular locale, while they may hold those taxes down for three years or whatever, that's three years of lower revenue stream that they're collecting Well not in this.
Speaker 2:In three-year period of time you've got inflation and the cost of goods and sales going up.
Speaker 4:Not necessarily because you know every time you sell, or every time somebody sells a home, they're automatically going to increase their property tax. That property tax because we don't have a frozen property tax like they have in California, where it always reverts back. But when you sell your property your automatically going to get an increase in property tax. You're not going to necessarily pay what the guy?
Speaker 4:paid before, because so that's where you're going to get the additional funds from. But those people that stay in these homes for years and years and years, like you said before, the elderly, you know that's getting the rate deteriorating.
Speaker 2:Excuse me. No, I mean, sir, that's another reason why neighborhoods deteriorate. If you've got a neighborhood that's gentrified of a lot of old people, and number one first thing, an old person will say, well, I don't have no kids in school, let me see if I can get rid of this thing right here, I can hop out and do whatever I got to do. But, more importantly, their homes, if they're not appreciating in value, their taxes remain low or they never go up or whatever. If there's any schools in that area or anything else, that particular neighborhood, just put it like that. I look at, I see it here in Detroit. I was done Certain neighborhoods. You better not have a fire, you better pull out your garden hose, okay, because, heck, there's only one house for every 16 blocks, all right. And then there's other portions of the cities, whereas that sucks. You got a lot of houses. It's only worth about 10,000 to 15,000 to that gone dollars. So there's no tax revenue to support the school. So what happened? We got all these empty school buildings.
Speaker 4:So it's not necessarily true. I hear what you're saying in theory, but your property tax are voted on every year and there is an increase in the millage rate. There's an increase if you approve a bond for your particular area. Those go in. So it's very seldom that your property tax will stay year to year to year the same, regardless if you sell or not, regardless if you have exemptions or not.
Speaker 4:Basically, the exemptions help people elderly people, not necessarily skirting of not paying for the school, because there's still going to be a certain amount that's going to go towards those programs. But what it is saying is that you've reached an age and you may be exempt from not total property tax. But here again there's an amount of money that will be taken away from your property. So you're not paying the full amount as a young adult that just bought the house that has four kids in school. So it all balances out. But it's not a situation where you just are not paying property tax because you've gotten to a certain age. You're still going to pay property tax. Trust me, there's enough money out there. What you're getting into is more is the government or your local municipality using the money correctly to support the residents and providing the services, but there's plenty of money to go around. Trust me.
Speaker 2:I believe that, all right, this has been a great conversation. Well, it's been good. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 4:Hopefully we'll reeducate our community as far as their ability and what they have a right to do as far as a homeowner, because, like I said, a lot of people I talked to didn't know they could even appeal their property tax Out of sight, out of mind, because of the fact that it's escrowed every month. So they think they have no means to do that. But here again, like I said, the government encourages you to do that and you should do that If nothing else. But it frozen for three years, right, and with that said guys, hey, man, that's all I got. I enjoyed it. Hopefully it's enlightened some of our folks. But usually, what words of pearls of wisdom do we have to send those out of here with?
Speaker 2:Okay, look here, taken from the power of now, whatever we see and judge the present through the eyes of the past, we get a totally distorted view of everything.
Speaker 3:That carto, baby, that carto, that carto, that's my man.
Speaker 2:As recorded here Alright, hey, look here.
Speaker 4:If you didn't know, as we said, now you know. Now you know, take care Music.