Taxes

I think we can all agree the housing market needs a little kick in the pants right now! Well, your Federal Government to the rescue. This week congress passed a Housing Rescue Bill which will attempt to do a number of different things from foreclosure avoidance assistance, tax credits to some home buyers [...]

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I am clipping an interesting portion of an email just received from the Michigan Association of Realtors, witha bit of good news for those home sellers who are carrying two homes in Michigan.
Yesterday, Governor Granholm signed 3 significant pieces of REALTOR® supported legislation. First, legislation enabling home sellers to retain 2 principal resident exemptions for [...]

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The following is a reprint of an email we received tonight from the Michigan Association of Realtors. It’s actually the first I have heard of this exemption, and it is exciting. I am going to have to do a bit more digging to see what this actually looks like when it is applied.

Attorney [...]

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Source: ShutterstockWell, it’s really Millages. Millages. Millages.
I’m interrupting our series on Oakland County luxury homes today to bring you a post about property taxes. I was perusing a report on 2007 Oakland County Millage Rates and decided to see where we would find the highest property tax rates.
The winners:

Lathrup Village, where the homestead millage [...]

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The real estate market has turned many a hopeful seller into a reluctant landlord (or SellLord, as I have dubbed them). Yesterday I got wind of something I have never heard of before, though I can understand the motivation.
A new tenant went to enroll her children in the Birmingham public schools. The [...]

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Just a friendly reminder that if you are concerned about your latest tax assessment, NOW is the time to be working on an appeal. Each municipality has it’s own review [...]

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If you are interested in local millage rates, this is the definitive source for 2006.  As soon as the 2007 publication becomes available, I will publish it here.
Oakland County property tax rates begin on page 110.  I did notice a mistake under the Birmingham City section.   I am not aware of any homes in Birmingham [...]

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Could there be a silver lining to the increasing number of foreclosures in Michigan? Maybe. Maybe not.
The State of Michigan just changed the laws allowing foreclosures to be taken into consideration in property tax assessments. Previously the depressed sales were disallowed as aberrations. In Oakland County areas particularly hard [...]

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Yesterday I had one of my top 10 most memorable showings. This is a list that you don’t want to be on as most of those showings tend to be memorable for bad reasons, like finding people asleep in beds when you think the house is empty. That is always good for a [...]

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Just received news (not good news) from Lansing that the proposed moratorium on the pop up tax is not likely to come to be this year. We were looking at it as a short term stimulus for the housing market and were optimistic that it would have helped to motivate home buyers over the [...]

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Last week Larry Ruehlen from the West Bloomfield Observer-Eccentric called me to chat about the proposed moratorium on the pop-up tax, which, if passed, should help to stimulate sales of existing homes. My conversation with Larry made me think about some of the aspects of how this legislation will impact the way I sell [...]

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