Saturday, January 17, 2009

Property tax assessments not owner friendly

From the NY Post:

The Finance Department late yesterday very quietly issued its tentative assessment roll for fiscal 2010, showing that the overall value of all city properties has declined 1.2 percent, from $811 billion to $801 billion.

The market value of one-family homes fell much more sharply, nearly 7 percent.

But, difficult as it may be to believe, taxes on those properties are going up $265, from an average of $3,218 a year to $3,483.

That's because the state limits annual increases on small homes to 6 percent, or 20 percent over five years.

That's good news when values are soaring and the tax bills are capped.

It's bad news when values drop after a boom and there are hefty carryovers from previous years that have to be calculated into the complex formula.


A PAIN IN THE ASSESS

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

When catastrophe hits a community, there will be those who take advantage of the confusion by stealing from homeowners.

We call them looters.

The Commissar is using his own failure to control spending in this city to now loot from homeowners.

He is driven by savage greed.

Anonymous said...

On Dec. 22, 1994 the Mexican peso was devalued over 40%. This, coupled with an increase in the U.S. prime rate enacted by the U.S. Federal Reserve, rendered Mexico nearly bankrupt largely due to dollar-denominated bond debt to Wall Street banks.

The U.S. government got the International Monetary Fund and Canada to give Mexico money to put together a bailout package to pay its creditors, most of which were Wall Street banks. The International Monetary Fund contracted Mexico's bailout loan to the U.S. Treasury Department. Acting in the interest of Wall Street creditors, Peter King got Congress to adopt legislation that imposed monthly oversight on the bailout implementation by the Banking Committee.

To get the bailout money, Mexico was required to meet stipulations that violated its own Constitution, which limited foreign ownership of the banking industry to 5% and forbade home mortgage interest rates above 7%.The bailout package required that foreign banks get 49% of the banking market. Limits on interest rates for all loans were eliminated to pay off Citi, Chase Manhattan, Bank of America, JP Morgan, and the other foreign bond investors. Another stipulation on the bailout money required Mexico to put a cap on wages nationwide.

Although it was a major Mexican bond creditor, JP Morgan became Mexico's financial adviser. An arrangement like this in the United States would have been seen as a blatantly illegal conflict of interest.
The impact of 1995 loan interest rate increases was more than millions of people and thousands of businesses could handle. Thousands of farms and businesses, both large and small, went bankrupt. In 1995 alone over 12,000 of Mexico's businesses filed for bankruptcy, and as economic activity came to a standstill and demand was cut, orders were canceled and plants operated at less than minimum levels.

A few years later Citi became the owner of 23.2% of the Mexican loan market through its acquisition of Banamex.The banking and finance sector rewarded the Republican members of the banking committees in Congress with millions of dollars in campaign contributions.

In the mid 90s, the U.S. financial services industry concentrated campaign contributions to New York Congressman Peter King, the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee and adviser to the Giuliani campaign, and to other new majority Republican leaders on the House and Senate Banking Committees.

Anonymous said...

What are y'all whining about?
Tax assessments in this city are insanely low as it is.* A little increase isn't going to kill anyone.

*just compare to any municipality of even 1/8 the size and wealth

Anonymous said...

IT'S STILL LOOTING THE SMALL HOMEOWNER to make up for those greedy Wall St. guys fucking up!

Let Bloomberg and his minions personally do their share to bail out NYC with some of their multi millions and not break the back of those who aren't as well off
as they are.

And any piss ant who says our taxes are comparatively low didn't take into account that EVERYTHING ELSE in NYC costs much more than it does in other municipalities.

So hop on my thumb and rotate
you self serving boob!

Anonymous said...

IT'S STILL LOOTING THE SMALL HOMEOWNER to make up for those greedy Wall St. guys fucking up!

Hmmm. You have very keenly observed one and only one part of the problem. Wall St. losses mean less city revenue from FIRE, yes. Now consider that EVERY city department is having to make cuts (or raise revenues) to help pay for services we all benefit from, and this is just one facet of that deficit-reduction program.

And any piss ant who says our taxes are comparatively low didn't take into account that EVERYTHING ELSE in NYC costs much more than it does in other municipalities.

Not true, not true, and not true. The one household budget item that is markedly higher here is RENT (or mortgage payments, what have you). As a homeowner, you benefit in ways from the low real estate taxes that us lowly renters do not.
So stop your freakin' whining!