Detroit Real Estate

Will my Michigan property taxes go up after I buy the home?  I hope I can explain how Michigan property taxes work a little better.

When you buy a house the taxes you see may not be the taxes you have next year.  Why is that you ask?  The reason is that the taxes you see on the listing ticket are based on taxable value.  Once you buy the house the taxes will be based on state equalized value.  Many time taxable value and SEV are different.  Right now in the year 2009 many homes State equalized value and taxable values are the same.

So how do you find out whether your new home taxes will go up or stay the same when you buy the house?  Easy ask your Metro Detroit realtor to pull the public records.  You can easily determine whether the taxes will go up or stay the same buy looking at the current years taxable value and SEV.

In the example below you will see the SEV in 2006 was 164,000 and the taxable value was 118,380.  The sellers were paying taxes base on the taxable value, but you will be paying taxes on the state equalize value.  So the easy way to figure out what you would have to pay is based on an algebra equation you learned in high school and want to forget.

current taxable value divided current SEV = current taxes divided by X   X being your new taxes when you buy a home

So in this example    X = 4035.02 (current taxes) times 164,200 (SEV) divided by 118,300.  Your new property taxes would be $5600.  If you are no good at math, another way to verify what the property taxes will be is to call the city the property is located in and ask.

 So the best route to take is to get your real estate agent to help you find whether your property taxes will go up after I buy the home.  I hope this explains how Michigan property taxes work.

Russ Ravary

How Michigan property taxes work- homestead taxes and non-homestead taxes - part 1

How Michigan property taxes work - the difference between SEV and taxable value part 2 

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