That’s right Ray. They originally classified my daughter’s residence as an unoccupied rental assessed at 6%. Then they corrected it to owner occupied at 4%. (i.e. half again as much higher property tax for rentals)
As Astrid mentioned, there is a Homestead tax credit on the first 50K, but you have to be either over 65, legally blind, or disabled to qualify.
In short, the effective property tax rate in most of Greenville is 1.38% for primary residence, and 2.07% for rentals (for 2017).
For a 100K rental house, one would only have to charge an extra $57.50/month to cover the extra property tax assessed to rentals vs. a homeowner primary residence. ((2.07% - 1.38%) * 100K / 12)). A 100K house will rent for about $1200/month in Greenville.
Mark,
You’re right, but the only problem is that the lessor can’t always
pass along tax increases to the lessee. We have automatic property
tax assessments every 7 years, and the assessed value of your property
may have increased beyond the point of what you can pass on to the
lessee. I have appealed my fair share of reassessments over the years,
and some of these “tax assessors” use methods that aren’t even accepted
valuation methods. I’ve been a Realtor for 45 years and have taught Real
Estate courses in college and for Century 21, and have had to “educate”
some of these guys.
You should check out the areas around 25 miles east of Sacramento. Fair Oaks, Folsom, Orangevale, Citrus Heights, and others around here. Just a few miles from Folsom Lake and the American river, hour and a half to skiing in Tahoe, hour and a half to coast. Good fishing, good schools, hundreds of miles of bike trails and many outdoor activities here. Also we sometimes get delta winds here and the nights are cool in summer usually. Pretty good air here too, 25 right now according to the real time website Stan posted. The summers are hot though, perfect for high brix stonefruit, but we have cool fall weather that is great for citrus. We also have the fig wasp here and many wild fig trees around. Vegetables do great here too!
I think I missed something here- why would the effective rate be so low? Around here at least, the assessed value is 70% of the appraised. So, if the mill rate was 60 (6%) for a rental, the effective percent would be 4.2%, or about $350/month on a 100K place ($117/month more than owner occupied).
That’s not bad- it passes the 1% rule I’ve read about. You want rental properties where the rent is over 1% of the cost of the property. It’s very hard to find around here and only multi-families are close. Even so, we’ve only found one like that and it was at auction. To do the math, if you get an 80K mortgage (~400/month), pay $4200 in taxes, pay $100 maintenance/month, and expect 1 month vacancy each year, you end up with with a 15% rate of return on your money.
Sounds nice…Just how nice was driven home as I shoveled my driveway today in 15F temps.
Wow. I’ve never heard of an assessed value 70% of appraised, but I’m a Midwest boy. Here the effective tax rate on my property is about what it is in SC (about 1.3% of appraised (or market) value.)
For Greenville SC, the assessed value is 4% for primary residence (6% for rental), the mill rate for 2017, for most of Greenville is 0.3442 (some places in Greenville have lower millage). 4% X .3442 = 1.37% effective rate for primary residence.
Here is a link which shows actual property tax bills for people in Greenville (Every town/county pretty much maintains these data bases online nowadays.) Just type in a random name like Smith or Jones, and you can see random tax bills (and mill rates) for the city of Greenville.
And here I was thinking that the taxes were looking a bit worse than ours, at least on a percentage basis…I took a look at some random Smiths and their effective rates ranged from 0.66% to 2.2%, with some in between (0.85%, 2.14%). Must be a number of factors which drives it- maybe some are billed semi-annually?
Doing the above ROI calculation with a 2.1% effective tax rate, the new return is 36%. I shouldn’t tell my wife or she’ll want to move tomorrow. Or at least start buying properties remotely, something that I’ve resisted so far.
I should have mentioned, if you click on the names which have, “View Tax Notice” below them. You can see their individual bill and see exactly what the mill rate is, what percentage they use to get assessed value, what exemptions they got, etc.
For example when I type in Smith, I can scroll down to the bottom and I see the name Alfreda Walker Smith. However, only three times do I see her name with “View Tax Notice” beneath it (for years 2015, 2016, 2017). If I click on “View Tax Notice” for 2017, it pulls up her individual tax bill for that year. She has a ratio of 4% (i.e. assessed value is 4% of market/appraised value). Her mill rate is 0.2957, so her effective rate should be 4% X .2957 = 1.18% on her $163,000 home. However, you will notice that she gets a school tax credit of $915, which lowers her effective tax rate substantially, bringing it down to 0.64%
The school tax credit is a legislative thing which all primary residence holders get. On the first 100k of their home, they don’t have to pay for school taxes. The school tax credit doesn’t apply toward rental property.
“Basically:
Warm- enough that there isn’t more than a month or so of days below 50F.
Cold- enough to have at least a few chill hours (I’m flexible on this one- I can pluck leaves to simulate chill…)
Wet- enough that I don’t risk my plants dieing without being able to water them (drought, water restrictions, etc)
Dry- enough to not have too many bugs
Cheap- Relatively low cost of living (or at least not the top). I’m very flexible on this one but my wife isn’t.
Landloard Friendly- or at least middle of the road.”
That is tough. Basically you’re talking zone 9 or 10. If you can’t do California, that leaves you with the coast of Oregon and Washington, south Arizona, south Texas and the bottom half of Florida. But coastal Oregon and Washington are not good for most fruit trees, Arizona has no water and both zone 9 Texas and zone 9 Florida have more humidity than you can even imagine. So there really are no places in the continental US that fit your criteria. Something will have to give. The factor that is limiting you the most is not more than a month or so of days below 50. Even many zone 9 locations do not meet that criteria.
For soil info, check the UC Davis soil maps. Just plug in an address and check out the soil. It can vary a lot from one city to the next or even one block to the next. https://casoilresource.lawr.ucdavis.edu/gmap/
CrazyforFruits - I have spent a lot of time in San Jose California since 2001 and the weather is incredible - especially compared to the mid-Atlantic region where I live. Just a couple of comments - somewhat off topic.
Is your company based in the SJC-SFO area? What happens if you move and they stop there telecommuting program? My company is based in San Jose -Milpitas area and i am fighting that battle now.
I assume you are in the tech field - do you really want to be away from the center of the tech industry?
I did not read the thread to close but do you own in SJC? Last time I looked (2002) starter homes were a half million and those were rare. It is not easy to get established in the SJC area - in your case re-established.
Assuming you own and your house was worth $750K you could buy 400 acres in rural Southern Virginia or South West Virginia (the boonies) where depopulation has occurred and a 2500 FT square house (new or well kept). I am not saying this is optimal place to grow fruit (maybe acre qty vs quality) but it would sure as hell beat the traffic in the SFO area. You would pay significantly lower taxes (income and property) and your electric/gas bill would be lower. But you would be living in the sticks. Good luck in your relocation search. A good place to look for land is “Land and Farm . Com”
Agreed, and the badminton factor makes it even tougher. Maybe if I find somewhere I really want to go I can suggest we just build our own club
It’s also possible that I’ll have to relax a bit on the always-warm requirement.
I agree that’s a concern, but it seems like at least pockets seem to have decent ground supplies, Jolene mentioned above. I guess I need to check into Mesa’s, as that is both warm, and where the badminton club is.
And I’m guessing they probably have bug/disease pressures to go along with it. I suppose I’d need to visit in summer to know if it would bother me, but even if it doesn’t it could be an issue for whatever I grow. May need a greenhouse anyways, which doesn’t put it much ahead of the Carolinas.
I’ve started playing around with this a bit and it looks like it uses the same data as the national Web Soil Survey linked above. It boggles the mind how much effort went into collecting that much data. Was it the equivalent of Google capturing StreetView, except instead of just driving around they had to stop, shovel, and analyze every few hundred feet?? I need to get better at interpreting the map to determine what won’t work for fruit. Seeing something like “73C- Charlton-Chatfield complex, 0 to 15 percent slopes, very rocky” (where I currently live) tells me that digging will be hard to dig (correct), but doesn’t say too much else.
(I cannot figure out how to quote something- but in response to southern/southwest virginia)
Ive bought land in southwest virginia before. It was the prettiest place I have ever lived. Apples grow very well there, and where i lived you could find an old apple tree about every 50 feet. Its an apple lovers paradise for sure. It is also very very rural (which I actually like) and cheap but winters are brutal since you’re in the mountains (to this carolina cold weather wimp, anyway).
The UC Davis soil map does seem to have the same information as the National Web Soil Survey but it’s much easier to access on the Davis site. I used to hate using the WSS because it was so slow, so poorly designed and so glitchy.
There’s a Houston fruit group that I used to belong to and you would not believe the bug and disease pressure they get in the Gulf. 95 degrees and 95% humidity in the summer is also extremely uncomfortable. I would much rather deal with a cold winter’s day than 95 and 95 in the summer. You can get warmed up in the winter. You can’t do anything about 95 and 95. My wife is from the Philippines and she loves hot humid summers, but she does not like Houston.
Arizona does have pockets that have decent ground water but access to that ground water is going to be increasingly restricted in the future. It’s a big issue in Arizona where they are rapidly depleting ground water.
I think that eventually you may find your best options in zone 8 on the SE Atlantic coast - Georgia, SC and NC.
[quote=“castanea, post:69, topic:13910”]
For soil info, check the UC Davis soil maps. Just plug in an address and check out the soil.
[/quote].
Thank you! I tried to use it with my address and got results. It says I have well drained soil but don’t understand anything else…
SpudDaddy - good points! My mortgage is almost paid off. I plan to rent it out or keep it locked so I have the option to move back if needed.
If I get laid off options are early retirement if I can afford it or move back.
Click at the start of the text you want to quote and drag the mouse to the end of the text, all without letting up on the mouse. Once you have highlighted the text, let up on the mouse and a “Quote” button appears right above the text. Click that button and you will see the quoted text in your reply.
Hot and humid isn’t the right environment for a greenhouse. Hot and dry is workable because evaporative cooling works in a very dry climate even as hot as Vegas or Mesa. That would be better than Houston or Corpus. A greenhouse is probably workable in NC. It’s the dew point that’s critical for a greenhouse and for comfort. Both are cooled by evaporation.
My dew points here are 55-65 in summer and variable in winter between zero and 40. Dew points above 65-70 are uncomfortable. It was mention above that Hawaii has low dew points. They aren’t awful but mostly 62-68 from what I found.
I had been thinking that keeping the rain and bugs off would be enough. But if I take your point correctly, the greenhouse would either fog up like a car with a lot of people and the windows rolled up, or get so scorching hot (greenhouse effect…) that plants would die? Air conditioning for a greenhouse could get expensive.
I couldn’t find any reference earlier in the thread, but I just checked the current (around 1pm HI time) dew point and they were 57 and 62 at two different sites. But, I suspect that it will be pretty variable, given that parts of the islands get much more rain than others. In just the examples from my spreadsheet, the variance is 31" to 171" per year.
Earlier I took a look at the Farm and Land site and searched for Hawaii. One of the first to come up was an acre of land for 15K, which caused me to do a double-take. And another was even cheaper at around 4K. When I looked at it on the map, I was wondering why parts of the map were so much darker than others. Then, I realized that it is a lava flow…So I guess I would need to ask, “Which plants can take the heat…Like 1500-2000 degrees?”
