Supplemental Property Tax Bill – What to look out for
Have you ever heard of a Supplemental Property Tax Bill? Well, as a new home owner you will! But before you get surprised by it, here’s what you need to know:
What is it?
In California your property taxes are based on your purchase price. This was originally designed so that folks who bought their home for relatively low prices don’t just get taxed out of their homes as they appreciate in value.
So for short time, when you buy a home it has the previous owner’s tax amount still associated with it. When you get your first tax bill from the county it is often incorrect. To fix it, they send you a 2nd tax bill to add the amount you were short on the first one received. This can happen in as little as a couple weeks, or as long as several months after your purchase.
For example :
You buy a house for $400,000. The tax should be about $4800/year. But the previous owner had only paid $300,000 for it. Their bill was $3600/year. So you’ll likely get a first bill reflecting the $3600, then a 2nd bill for the remaining amount owed. In this case that would be $1200 prorated by the amount of time left in tax period.
Good news
If you chose to have an impound account set up when you bought your home, the lender will already have taken this into account. You will have already put enough money into your Impound account to pay for both of these. Now you’ll still receive the two bills, but you can be happy knowing you don’t have to reach back in your pocket to take care of them!
You can look up your tax bill for San Diego County by clicking here. It’s still a good idea to call your Servicer (the Company that collects your payments) when you get one of these, just to make sure they got it too, and that your covered.
If you have questions about your supplemental tax bill, or want more tips about what to look out for, click here and shoot me a quick email request.