Once again first I am sending this to all the Condo Owners and the few Town-home owners I have emails for so if a Town-home owner can forward this to your whole group that would be great. I will also be posting this on FaceBook as well.
Once again second since I am not sure who has the city has transferred property tax assessment to yet so I am sending this to everyone but if you have not gotten your "Secured Supplemental Property Tax" from the City then you can ignore this email but may want to hold onto it just in case you do get one in the future.
Below is an email I sent to Lennar and North American Title Company as the escrow company for my purchase as I think I found an issue with all the closing documents I was given. This time I got a supplemental from the city on Monday that was higher then I was expecting and did some math with the help of a friend who know property tax calculating. If I am correct I was over charged, by a bit, at closing for my property taxes. I do not know if anyone else was but if you got the Supplemental tax bill you should check your numbers. Please read the email below for more details.
Just one more thing I did block out my personal numbers by replacing them with XX's. Also I did not include the email or attachment mentioned in the email as it also had personal information in it. I am not sure any of the town home folks got a documents from Lennar in April about the breakdown of taxes paid so we could take our proporty taxes off our tax returns. For any owners who got that document you can should be able to follow my comments by looking at the packet they sent around to those that asked and had closed by December 31, 2015.
Let me know if you have any questions but not sure how well I can answer them,
Jason Fried
Merchant #411
Property Tax issues from closing.
Hello Lennar and North American Tittle Company staff;
I am not sure if I have the correct people to assist me but yours are the emails I have so if somebody else from your group needs to be added to this please let this group know.
Yesterday I got a "Secured Supplemental Property Tax" bill for FY 2015-2016. So I spent a small bit of today talking with both the Tax Collector Office and a friend who deals with propriety tax issues to get an understanding of what is going on as it seems what I am being asked to pay is higher then seems correct given what I paid at closing.
After my discussion it appears I need to get more information as no matter how I do the Math it always seems to appear I am paying more then I should at the end of the day.
In my closing costs I paid $4,269.51. The supplemental for FY 15-16 had a total due of $1,928.28. This means I end up paying $6,197.79 total for this year.
Now in reviewing what you provided to me in the below email and its attachment I did some math. I went into the attachment and on page 11 (labeled page 5 on the bottom of the page I am referring) I see a property tax estimator under section B on that page. So I entered my information left empty to figure out what the total for the year is.
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estimated sale price - $481,500 ( my real sale price minus my homeowners exemption)
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tax rate - .011743 (copied from document)
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multiple lines 1 and 2 - $5,654.25
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Special Assessment - $4,721.37 (copied from document)
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Total for year - $10,375.62
Now in my Supplemental tax bill it says my "rate factor" is 58% which I am told means that is the percent of the year I owned the propriety compared to Lennar owning the propriety. So 58% of $10,375.62 = $6017.86.
So this leave a difference of the total I paid through closing and will pay in supplemental ($6,197.79) and what I think I should be paying ($6,017.86) which would mean $179.93 being overpaid by me.
A different way to possible look at this is on page 2 of the packet you have a "Pro-Ration Estimate at COE" of $6,957.01 and owning the property for 61.37% of the year. The City on my supplemental says my "Rate Factor" should only be 58%. This leads to a difference of $234.44 between what should have been paid based on the change of portion of year I owned the priority. Now the difference may in part be due to the fact that in the attachment page 3 "A. Settlement Statement (HUD-1)" document estimates the date you are calculating for included July 1, 2016 which should not be included as the fiscal year ends on June 30, 2016. I do note the documents you provided do say estimate all over them and we now have actual non estimate numbers to use from the city.
Now that we have firm official numbers from the city I am looking to make sure I do not over pay and we each pay our fair share for FY 15-16. So can you please get back to me on:
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Do you agree that given this information from my supplemental tax bill that the numbers given during closing and this supplemental means I am paying a higher share then I should? I have two different numbers listed above so we need to discuss which makes more sense.
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If you do not agree with me please explain and show where my math is wrong?
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North American Title staff can you let me know if I still have any money left in my escrow account that should be returned to me?
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If no money is in my escrow account were did the money from the property tax line item go; to Lennar, the City and County of San Francisco (CCSF), or somebody else? If it went to CCSF then can you show me proof of transfer and to what part of CCSF it went to? (I will need this to help get them to find the money that should be helping cover my supplemental) If it went to somebody else, who was it?
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If the money went to Lennar then Lennar can you please send me a reimbursement, once we agree upon the correct amount to send, plus any appropriate interest, so this can be settled assuming Lennar got the County Tax line item from closing it would appear I paid for a portion of your tax bill through closing or you have my money in some other way.
As a final note just so you are all aware I will be sharing this information, minus my personal financial information, with my fellow neighbors so they can be made aware of this issue so they can check there information as well.
Thank you all for your attention and assistance in settling this matter.
Jason Fried
Merchant #411
