All Forum Posts by: Allen Tracy

I've definitely seen a lot more "Price Reduced" e-mails from Zillow.  All I see is turnkey units or absolute dumps that an investor is bailing on.  Hardly any "value add" properties left and the ones that are left are selling for near turnkey prices.  Myself and fellow investors have seen a cooling trend in trying to rent out units for higher prices, we've been having to reduce the amounts ourselves (seeing the same thing in other markets), but we haven't seen a ton of cooling yet, more of a holding steady.  I've also seen huge rent increases in Section8 though so even at a crazy high sales price it still meets the 1% rule.

Maybe we're at the top, it's flat lining a bit, and we'll start to see a slight drop soon.  I'm not sure that we're going to see a huge drop though.  There's still tons of new investors flooding the market that are now looking at appreciation instead of cashflow so they're willing to pay more and have less cashflow.

I'm hoping you're right though and we'll see a drop at some point.

They haven't changed the value in over three years through multiple sales and even permits being pulled.  They've had the property at a value of $25,000 so I'd say they easily left off a 0.

I’ve been told there’s no use in fighting it since you’d be going up against the county and the school board.  Only options are wait for the hearing, then pay the county the back taxes, or pay the school board directly to drop the complaint. 

I posted this in the legal section of the forums but since it's Columbus based I thought I should warn investors in the Columbus forum.

Anyone else have to go through a tax appeal hearing and have to pay back taxes on a property even for the years you didn't own it? I just purchase a 4 unit in Columbus, OH a couple of months ago. The sale triggered an alert and The Board of Education has filed a complaint against the County Auditor's tax value of the property for the last two years. The Board of Education is claiming that for the past few years it was under valued for tax purposes and The Board of Education wants their money! Apparently in Columbus the back taxes fall on the current owner and does not follow any previous owners.

I've heard from other investors that The Board of Education is doing this over and over and really hitting new investors hard. They have a team dedicated to going after back taxes. You could purchase a property and then a few months later owe another $15,000 or more in back taxes.

When I ran the numbers on the property I noticed the taxes were extremely low but I ran it with updated numbers based on the purchase price knowing that eventually there would be a re-evaluation and the taxes would go up. I had no idea that I would be responsible for the years that the County Auditors were behind on.

To me this feels like purchasing a car from someone, then the DMV all of a sudden says "Sorry, we were under charging the previous two owners the incorrect registration fees for the last few years, you now owe us thousands of dollars."

If you plan to invest in Columbus, OH pay close attention to the previous tax years and put away thousands of dollars to cover any back taxes just in case The Board of Education goes after you.

Neither my agent or the escrow/title officer mentioned anything about previous years having low taxes.  I have a lawyer helping me out with the case and he said the purchase contract also should have included the proration on property taxes paid by the seller should be based on the purchase price and not what they are currently paying for taxes.  That would have at least helped for one year of back taxes.

Anyone else have to go through a tax appeal hearing and have to pay back taxes on a property even for the years you didn't own it?  I just purchase a 4 unit in Columbus, OH a couple of months ago.  The sale triggered an alert and The Board of Education has filed a complaint against the County Auditor's tax value of the property for the last two years.  The Board of Education is claiming that for the past few years it was under valued for tax purposes and The Board of Education wants their money!  Apparently in Columbus the back taxes fall on the current owner and does not follow any previous owners.

I've heard from other investors that The Board of Education is doing this over and over and really hitting new investors hard.  They have a team dedicated to going after back taxes.  You could purchase a property and then a few months later owe another $15,000 or more in back taxes.

When I ran the numbers on the property I noticed the taxes were extremely low but I ran it with updated numbers based on the purchase price knowing that eventually there would be a re-evaluation and the taxes would go up.  I had no idea that I would be responsible for the years that the County Auditors were behind on. 

To me this feels like purchasing a car from someone, then the DMV all of a sudden says "Sorry, we were under charging the previous two owners the incorrect registration fees for the last few years, you now owe us thousands of dollars."

If you plan to invest in Columbus, OH pay close attention to the previous tax years and put away thousands of dollars to cover any back taxes just in case The Board of Education goes after you.

Section8 will tell you what the total amount will be and they actually determine the amount they will pay and the amount the tenant portion will be. I was originally trying to get $725 for a unit, Section8 said they would do $716 total with them paying 78% of that and the tenant paying the remaining 22%. A few years later we submitted a rent increase which Section8 agreed to, re-evaluated the tenant’s income, and changed the percentage that they had to cover. 

Thanks, I've heard good things about Atlanta but haven't explored that market yet.

Thanks!! 

I saw a BP article that mentioned the site neighborhoodscout.com.  It looks very interesting.  I've been narrowing down new cities that I'd like to invest in with a group of people and we've been going the normal route of collecting data through government sites but it's time consuming.  The BP insights is all over the place in the different articles so you have to do a lot of digging the find the data for each city.  Has anyone used neighborhoodscout, know how reliable the information is, or know of any other websites that collect and present data like that?