As home prices have declined, many homeowners in Bucks County, PA are appealing their tax assessment with the Bucks County Board of Assessment. The deadline to appeal your Bucks County Tax Assessment is August 2, 2010.
How do you determine if your home is over-assessed?
The STEB ratio handed down by the state for 2011 fair market calculations is .109. To determine the fair market value of your home, take your tax assessment and divide it by .109. For example, let's say your tax assessment is 64,000, to determine your fair market value, you would perform the calculation below:
64,000 / .109 = 587,155
Therefore, the fair market value indicated by your tax assessment is $587,155.
What if you think your home is work only $450,000?
You would submit a Residential Appeal to the Bucks County Board of Assessment, no later than August 2, 2010. Submit a Bucks County Residential Appeal Form with a check for the $25 filing fee. With this form, you will need to include some sort of documentation to support your opinion of fair market value of the home. It could be an appraisal, a HUD-1 from a recent sale in the last 18 months, or simply a list of similar homes that have sold in the past year.
Once the county receives your appeal, they will schedule a hearing in which you appear before the board with your evidence. Once you have your hearing, they will notify you by mail of any changes made to your 2011 tax assessment.
Need some help finding out just what your tax assessment is? Give me a call or shoot me an email! I'll be happy to provide you with your tax assessment, as well as give you a list of recently sold homes in your neighborhood.
15 year mortgage rates are at 4% today.
I was shocked at how low they were and decided to do a little investigating “just to see” if I could manage converting my 30 year loan to a 15 year one. If you’ve been in your loan for 5-7 years, and are at an interest rate of 6-7% you should run your numbers and see if a 15 year mortgage can save you a boatload of interest and knock significant years off your loan. Bet you it can!
Check out the tables below:
For a loan amount of $250,000
| Years | Rate | Monthly Payment | Interest over Life of Loan |
| 30 Fixed | 6% | $1498 | $290,000 |
| 15 Fixed | 4% | $1849 | $83,000 |
Now, lets take a look at these numbers if you’ve had your mortgage for 5 years…
By remortgaging the remaining balance, you’ll have a monthly payment of $1720, save $134,000 in interest, and pay off the original loan in 20 years as opposed to 30 years.
HUH?
I seriously expected you to follow all that?
Let’s do it again for a loan amount of $150,000:
| Years | Rate | Monthly Payment | Interest over Life of Loan |
| 30 Fixed | 6% | $900 | $173,000 |
| 15 Fixed | 4% | $1109 | $49,000 |
If you’ve had your mortgage for 5 years…
By remortgaging the remaining balance, you’ll have a monthly payment of $1035, saving $73,000 in interest, and pay off the original loan in 20 years as opposed to 30 years.
If you really study these numbers, the difference in the monthly payment really isn’t too enormous when compared to the amount of interest you’ll be saving, as well as the years you’ll knock off your loan.
If you’d like me to run some numbers for you, feel free to shoot me an email, call me out on Facebook, or hit the mortgage calculator yourself!
Our in-house Mortgage Rep, Tom Fullen, hooked me up today, and always does a great job. I used Tom even before I started to work for Prudential and he always gets me a great rate, and gets the loans done.
