ping
Hate to break it to you, but Marylander communists now run Fairfax County.
The property accres taxes whether it is lived in or not. If the property is in your name then you must pay the taxes. They will start collections procedures if you do not pay. If the property was in your name you do owe those taxes.
The county bent me over and abused me that year. The next year was much more reasonable.
/johnny
I think you owe it. You pay taxes in arrears. When you bought the house, the previous owners paid you for their share of taxes used (accrued). Now, you pay the whole amount, including the time you didn’t live there.
Check your closing statement to see if you were given a credit from buyer.
Off topic = I have been to the National Firearms Museum in Fairfax. Nice town.
I left Northern Virginia 5 years ago and never looked back. Yes my current salary isn’t what it used to be....but instead of a 1/4 acre I have 140 and a fraction of the taxes!
You pay into the escrow in advance of the tax bill. You lived there 1/2 year and got a 1/2 year tax bill.
My settlement papers were handy.
I received a credit off the price for property taxes up to the date of sale.
In Virginia.
Taxes are generally included in your mortgage escrow if you have a loan. There is also a pro rata charge for taxes in your HUD statement that was paid by previous owner. Check with our lender, realtor to make sure that you have no tax obligations, they should have been included in the settlement.
Lots of good info in this thread. Key takeaways are that, in a vast majority of jurisdictions, the tax liability accrues to the property, not the owner. The owner of record as of the lien date will get the bill. In most cases, though, it’s negotiated out and taken care of during the closing process. A call to your realtor, followed by a call to the taxing jurisdiction, is the way to go.
Talk to the company that handled your settlement
As part of closing costs they should have assessed you a half years taxes, or a pro rated share of annual taxes for the time you owned the home, and passed this along as a credit to the buyer
Then the buyer would pay the property tax bill for the year
When you close on a house the closing attorney collects so many months of taxes from the seller and gives it to the buyer at closing and then when the tax bill comes due the buyer pays the whole bill.
Make an appointment with the place that did the closing, take along your paperwork, and they will explain it to you. And, you may want to file an amended tax return if you didn’t fully claim all property taxes that you could have. This isn’t rocket science and easily understood.
Municipalities will do anything and everything to tax you as much as they can get away with in order to keep their gravy train rolling. It is absolutely disgusting.
In my case, it was all three. When we bought the property, taxes were assessed after you lived in the house. On Jan 1, we were given a bill for the taxes for the previous year. If you bought a house during the year, you owed taxes for the portion of the year that you owned it. You didn't owe any taxes at closing.
Then the governments went to twice a year billing. In the process they slipped the timing to the mid year date that the partial taxes were due. A while later, they slipped the date, again, so now we pay taxes for the year ahead of the time we will live in the house. This, of course allowed them to collect an extra year's taxes without any public outcry.
So, now we pay in advance. If you buy a house mid-year, you have to pay the seller back for the taxes he paid previously, and you also owe next year's taxes on January 1 (or so). Depending on what your local agencies do, you could be in any, or all of the above conditions. When I say "local agencies", there are school operating budgets, school capital budgets, county taxes, township taxes, etc. They can all have different time periods. You pretty much have to trust your title agency to keep it all straight. Your title insurance should cover you for any mistakes, though, if you owe money, you will have to pay it in spite of having title insurance.
Am taking an on-line course right now to get my VA real estate license and this bloody situation is part of the course...
From what I have learned (if I have it right which is questionable), you are right! The previous owner pays the taxes for the first part of the year while they occupied the house. You are responsible for taxes after you occupied the house. Taxes are paid in arrears (a year behind) so the closing company should have made sure the sellers forked over the $ for the up coming tax bill. I’d contact the closing company which got big $$$ to conduct the transaction properly and let them know about this tax bill you got...good luck.