Rental Analysis - Determining Tax of Rent-Ready Property

[Frank Sousa]

Hi, my name is Frank and I'm new to BP, looking to start investing out of state in Indianapolis. I've identified a few properties I have been interested in and have done some analysis using the BP calculators but I'm struggling to calculate the taxes.  When I look up properties on the tax assessor's website the tax assessed value is really low ($10k to 20k) which results in a very low tax amount. From the research I've found, the tax for rental properties in the district I'm mostly interested in (District 101) the tax rate is capped at 2% of the assessed value. My question is for any investors in Indianapolis or other out of state investors who are investing in Indianapolis, what is assessed value of a property? How is it calculated? I'm assuming that the assessed values I'm seeing were the values based on when the houses were distressed and pre-rehab? Is it safe to assume when I purchase a property that the taxes will be re-assessed based on a combination of the sale price and the neighboring market?  I see all these pro-formas on the marketplace with monthly taxes of $30/month.  But this appears to be based on an assessed value of  $17,500 with a 2% cap tax rate.  Is it a good assumption when performing my rental analysis to use a "new" tax amount based on 2% of the purchase price? Or is that being too conservative? Using this "new" tax amount, I haven't been able to get any perspective properties to cash flow more than $50 to $100 per month and the cash on cash return on investment has been around 5-7%. I'm trying to get a minimum of $100/month cash flow per unit and a minimum cash on cash return on investment of 10%. So where am I going wrong? Or do I simply have to keep analyzing more properties and I just simply haven't found the right one. Thanks