I just received my Real Estate Property Tax for 2019 and found that it jumped almost 60% from the previous year. I was told by the Tax Assessor office that they big increase was due to the fact that all of the mobile homes in the park were each being assessed a Fire Protection Tax of approx $143. In yeas past the Tax Office only recognized the single family home on the property and therefore the Fire Protection portion was only $143. At this time I own 20 of the 21 units in the park. I have recently sold one of the POHs to the tenant and have no intention of paying tax to protect that unit from any peril.
Has anyone dealt with this situation in the past? Any input on fighting back on this assessment is greatly appreciated.
Fighting may be a waste of time and money. Best option is to simply raise your rents. Tenants pay for increases.
Tenants that own the home are billed by the park owner for their portion of the taxes.
The problem with “taxes” like this is that they will say this money is to allow firefighters to respond to fires in your community. But then you will later find out there is not even a fire hydrant within a half mile of your property, so the fire department in reality won’t do anything for you and is just taking your money.
If you’re going to pay taxes on this make sure there is a service that is actually available when you need it. Otherwise protest it with your reasoning. If there is not a fire hydrant nearby then any reasonable assessor would work with you on a valuation, or potentially strike it all together. Why is fire, all of a sudden, not part of the City tax you already paid - and was there a vote to change that?
Make sure you understand this 100% before accepting it and raising rents. Your tenants deserve that value and this is where your time needs to be spent.
Fire departments that respond to areas that do not have hydrants use tanker trucks to bring water to the fire. This is standard in ALL rural areas.
Most likely in this situation it was a oversite in the past to not realise that the property had more than one home on it. The billing should have been for each home all along.
In my case I have one tax bill for the entire property, land and homes, and must bill tenants bi-annually for the portion of taxes on their individual homes. In the case of POHs the park owner is responsible for the taxes on each home in addition to the land/business tax.
It is most likely a records correction ending a free ride. Be thankful they don’t try to charge for back taxes.
I had this happen one time. The issue is really that it was never accessed because of an error on their part since they only accessed the home not the MH’s. No use fighting it. Raise rents $15.