Brownstoner Upstate: Golden Oldies (and Low Taxes) in Greene County
Fridays at 11, Brownstoner Upstate brings you a selection of properties within three hours north, and a little east or west, of New York City. A few months ago, we looked at some stunning properties in the city of Kingston (Ulster County), which included some incredible old homes. While the prices were reasonable, the taxes…
Fridays at 11, Brownstoner Upstate brings you a selection of properties within three hours north, and a little east or west, of New York City.
A few months ago, we looked at some stunning properties in the city of Kingston (Ulster County), which included some incredible old homes. While the prices were reasonable, the taxes were not. If you head up to Greene County, however, you’ll find comparable pricing and much lower taxes. With that in mind, we found some beauties in Coxsackie, East Durham, and Athens, and with the exception of the one pictured below, they’re all priced under $300,000. By the way, if you’re looking to fall down a delightful rabbit hole of gorgeous, cheap houses, plug Coxsackie into a Trulia search and watch as your jaw hits your knees. Better yet, head up for a visit. It’s worth the drive.
Oh how we do love this sunny-yellow Victorian in Coxsackie that includes a barn plus an unfinished guesthouse. It’s on plenty of land right in the village close to the river (the listing claims seasonal views) and comes with a billion bells and whistles, like an enclosed porch, spiral staircase, wrap-around porch, the works. We could go on and on. The taxes seems suspiciously low even for Coxsackie, so it’s always good to get a reality check from the realtor on these things. Beds: 7. Baths: 2.5. Square Feet: 4,654. Lot Size: 3.5 acres. Taxes: $2,045.
49 Lafayette Street, Coxsackie (Heartland Realty) GMAP
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Some more loveliness in Coxsackie, this one in the form of a multi-family with the potential for conversion back to a single family. Again, it’s close to the river and Riverside Park, which is a nice place to explore on a pretty day. Beds: 4. Baths: 2. Square Feet: 2,452. Lot Size: .33 acre. Taxes: $2,517.
7 Hillcrest Street, Coxsackie (Lake & Mountain Realty) GMAP
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East Durham is a small hamlet in the town of Durham, and it’s packed with bargains. Even so, we had to do a double take on the price of this pristine five-bedroom Victorian. It’s close to the road, but it’s set up on a hill which gives it a little elbow room. Property includes a cute two-bedroom guest cottage. East Durham is an interesting place with lots of small Catskill motels and resorts, all Irish-themed. In fact, it’s known as the “Irish Alps.” Beds: 5. Baths: 3. Square Feet: 3,360. Lot Size: .5 acre. Taxes: $5,284.
2415 Route 145, East Durham (Coldwell Banker Village Green) GMAP
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And now for something completely different: An old schoolhouse in the village of Athens. The listing indicates that some gutting and renovating has begun, but the pictures make it seem like more gutting than renovating has been happening there. Still, it’s been a dream of ours for quite some time to live in a refurbed school house, especially one with a killer view of the river. Take heed: It needs everything. Beds: 0. Baths: 0. Square Feet: 2,640. Lot Size: .69 acre. Taxes: $1,169.
134 N. Washington Street, Athens (Lake & Mountain Realty) GMAP
And for a final reality check, the lovely yellow house in Coxsackie that’s listed first above, which Brownstoner claims has a tax burden of $2,045, is a case in point. If you look at the Columbia-Greene MLS, on which this house at 49 Lafayette Avenue is MLS#89875, you can scroll down the listing to what the broker is presenting as the tax burden, and discover that $2,044.69 is just the beginning of the tax story. Per that listing, this house has Town taxes of $2,044.69, Village taxes of $3,458, and School taxes of $5,922, for a grand total, NOW, of $11,424.69 – at an assessment of $260,000.. (Yes, there are properties that are in both a Village and Town assessment district, upstate). OK. So if you buy this property at its asking price of $549,000, you’re asking for the assessment to be more than doubled (from its current $260,000). And your taxes will eventually follow suit in the not too distant future, from the current $11,424.60 to north of $22,000/year….and that’s if you’re lucky and the mil rates don’t go up, which they almost undoubtedly will. Brownstoner, please check the local MLS listings before you post inaccurate taxes on upstate properties…each one will have more than one assessing district, and upstate, the school district taxes tend to be the biggest number.
Unfortunately, I do know what I’m talking about. While it’s true that many upstate municipalities work on a three-year supposed city-wide reassessment cycle, assessors also raise individual properties in between, which can be attributed to “trending,” or other factors. Under the law, the assessor is presumed correct unless and until proven otherwise, and in many municipalities local Boards of Assessment Review are appointed by mayors and tend to be pretty politicized, so one ends up having to appeal. Yes, it is supposedly illegal to do what’s called “sales chasing,” or “welcome stranger;” that is, upping an assessment of an individual property to its last sale price, without considering all similar properties in the same municipality and adjusting them accordingly, which in theory would keep the tax burden evenly distributed. But the fact of the matter is that sales chasing happens all the time in upstate NY, whether the year after your purchase, or two years, or three, depending on what point in the municipality’s assessment cycle you purchased.
What’s the problem? The problem is that many downstate buyers don’t realize the carrying costs they’re about to assume, in order to maintain a property upstate….particularly not those accustomed to the caps in the five boroughs. So that lovely property that looks like such a great getaway, with such low taxes, could wind up costing you the equivalent of a second mortgage on an ongoing basis, once the assessment goes up. Another problem is that some real estate brokers don’t research the current taxes on a property, and may be presenting the tax burden from years earlier. I’ve seen closings fall apart when the buyer’s attorney finally gets the data on the actual tax burden on the property in question…and the buyer screams and walks away. This is nothing that adequate research can’t eliminate. I’m just saying do your research before you get to the closing, and don’t take anything for granted.
What you have to remember about taxes in upstate NY is that what you see listed as the taxes on a property for sale is, in all likelihood, significantly lower than what you’ll end up paying, post-purchase. Assessors look to sale prices as ultimate proof of “fair market value.” And the State of NY urges assessors to assess at FMV. So if you purchase a house for $100,000 that’s assessed at $50,000 at the time of sale, within a couple years after you purchase, chances are that your assessment will rise to $100,000 or higher, and your taxes will at least double accordingly. If you pull permits for renovations, assessors will hike your assessment for those, as well (permits are funneled through the assessor’s office). And there’s no cap on how much your assessment can rise in a given amount of time, unlike with 1-3 family homes in the five boroughs.
Therefore, in order to figure out what you’ll PROBABLY be paying in taxes post-purchase, take the anticipated sale price and multiply by the aggregate “mil rate” (or tax rate per thousand dollars of assessment) of the municipality in question. That mil rate will include city, school, village, and county rates. That will give you at least a clue…but mil rates don’t stay constant either. And they almost NEVER go down; town and City councils raise them annually as their costs go up.
As an example, consider a two family frame house in need of work in Hudson NY, assessed at $250,000. In Hudson the local mil rates this year (rates per $1000 of assessment) are, respectively, .32 (City), 14.60 (County) and 16.475 (School), for an aggregate mil rate of 31.395. So your annual property taxes will be (31.395 x 250), or $7,848.75. Which is a lot more than the annual taxes on plenty of Brooklyn brownstones. And if you improve the property, you can bet your next assessment will be higher.
Plus the graduation rate from Hudson City schools is around 50-60%, and the City doesn’t include garbage collection in the services provided for free…you have to either hire a private garbage collection service or buy marked garbage bags at City Hall. And the water isn’t metered, so a single resident is paying the same for water as a family of ten.
Therefore, if you do care about your ultimate costs on a property upstate, it pays to research this stuff before you buy.
Thanks. There was no intention to offend. Complete tax information can also be difficult to get out of upstate real estate agents, as their mission is to close a sale. And it’s true that tax data can be lacking from MLS listings (though in the case of the yellow house, it wasn’t). The easiest way for your readers to research current taxes on a property that interests them is to get its assessment from the online tax rolls for the municipality, then call the local assessor’s office and get the current mil rates. After that, the multiplication is easy. And with respect to today’s comment on the tax discussion in this thread, it would probably have been a little less “confusing” if this software permitted one to insert spaces in between paragraphs when entering a comment.. As for “longwinded,” it’s a lot of information to convey, and undoubtedly boring to read. But it’s important. Because buyers lacking this information who get ambushed by an assessment hike like the hypothetical buyer of the yellow house, may wind up in foreclosure; once the tax burden jumps as set forth above, it’s virtually impossible to sell the property.