Lancaster, NY revaluation. It stinks!
Well, if you live in Lancaster, NY, you probably received a lovely letter yesterday regarding your property taxes and your property assessment. There were increases that appear across the board. The equalization rate is no longer as we have moved to 100% valuation. The increases are staggering in many cases.
The town of Lancaster continues to spend, and spend, and spend on projects that don’t benefit the town as a whole.
- There is a pricey new addition to town hall (approximately $985,000).
- There is a new police and courts facility in the works ($8,000,000 Plus).
- There is the new use of a former library for an emergency management office (that’s right, Lancaster has one).
- There is the proposed recreational facility that will certainly add long term costs.
- etc. etc.
Let’s not forget that use of these properties suddenly pulls them off the tax rolls. And, in the case where a sale is possible, eliminates the funds from a sale (Depew Library is a prime example).
Many will be fighting the new assessment figures. In a couple of cases, I will be one of them. If you aren’t familiar with the tools available to you for searching property information here are a couple:
I know that there is quite a bit of state and/or federal funding drying up for Towns and Villages. How about cutting costs rather than continuing to spend. If a surplus builds, cut taxes!
Politics suck.
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Administrator Real Estate, Tools and Reviews, Uncategorized assessment, assessments, lancaster, new york, ny, revaluation, review, taxes, town, village
If you have been a landlord for any period of time, I am certain that you have taken some vacancy loss, or had late payers that, in turn, led to a tenant skipping out on rent owed. After you have that experience, you realize the need to screen prior to allowing a tenant to sign a lease for your rental property.
I have used a service for the past few years called e-renter. They allow you to run a credit check and/or a criminal background check. Obviously nothing is foolproof, but by doing some basic tenant screening, you can eliminate some of the worst potential rent loss issues.
I often tell the story of the owner of a duplex next to mine having an issue with a tenant and I asked her what screening service she used. She paused and answered “… ooohhh, maybe that is the problem”. She wasn’t screening at all and only collected 4 months of rent in her first 10 months of ownership. The first tenant was recently bankrupt and the second was headed there. Had she screened in advance, she would have gotten a better picture of her prospective tenant.
In addition to tenant screening, I encourage any landlord to be sure they check references. I have rented to people with less than perfect credit because their references were so solid and their story regarding the credit issues checked out. I have also had references throw their ‘friends’ under the bus and essentially say “you would be crazy to rent to them”.
Do your homework… screen your tenants… be a real person and learn the story before you accept the first person who says “I’ll take it”.
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Administrator Real Estate, Tools and Reviews screening, tenant
There aren’t too many true “online real estate auction” sites around. There is one that I keep coming across. The site is Williams & Williams Auctions. They offer a true auction format that allows you to place online bids in real time on properties. This isn’t the case for all properties, but it is designated when it is.
A friend picked up a house in Lockport last year on this site. I think he ended up paying $14,000 for a home in a decent neighborhood. It was obviously a gut job, but for the price, that was justified.
Check out the site for yourself. Buyer Beware!
NY Real Estate Auctions
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Administrator Real Estate auction, new york, ny, Real Estate
Is it just me, or has Zillow had a real difficult time locating properties on the map lately? I can’t tell you how many times I have gotten the following page when doing a simple search on a valid property address.
Zillow - Property Not Found
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Administrator Real Estate zillow
I have been told that we will be seeing a flood of foreclosures since the “stay” is coming up. To be frank, I haven’t done too much homework on this, but my understanding is that there are teams of lawyers working crazy hours to process all of this stuff.
Here is a decent gauge: NY HUD foreclosure list.
Select Erie County from the NY State Foreclosure list. On 3/31/2009 there are 10 properties listed. In the past there were probably about 20-40. Let’s see if this spikes.
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Administrator Real Estate hud, list, new york, ny foreclosure
M&T Bank is a Buffalo based bank. They publish a list of the foreclosures (bank owned properties or REO) that they have on their books. Most, if not all, of their properties can be found on their site at:
M&T Bank Foreclosures
Many of the listings from a bank like M and T will also be represented by a Realtor and found in the MLS (multiple listing service).
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Administrator Buffalo Real Estate Bargains, Real Estate buffalo, m and t bank, m&t, reo