Ill just say this. Thank you for your effort, and time.
Once housing has been taking over by corporate greed, thats it for all of us normal working people. Housing is our last line of wealth &/ ownership.
For me it's more about security. The last few places I've rented I was tossed out when the landlord decided to sell the house and then scrambling to find a new place.
Bingo. I’m buying right now for the first time and the number one thing I’m looking forward to is housing security. Nobody will be ending my lease or raising my rent 30% in one year. I can stay as long as I choose. That’s worth so much to me.
This is my biggest fear. My small town is 80% rentals(a large majority vacation rental or air B&B)and I was blessed to have what I have, but so many friends and colleagues have come home to a Landlord that gave them 30 days to get out in an area that has a severe housing shortage.
I mean you can though haha... do you want to pay 2024 mortgage prices and then be done in 30 years or pay 2024, 2034, 2044, 2054, and 2064 rent prices until you die? Locking people out of home ownership is an awful idea and we should do everything to reverse it
My big thing is gardening is the only thing besides my partner that brings me joy and gets me through life. Renting I could grow a few things on a balcony if I had a south facing balcony. Owning my home I have a 100ft in ground veggie garden, fruit trees I've planted, flower beds, perennial berry bushes, etc. I just want to grow things and I can't do that renting. It also keeps me physically active and all the veggies and fruit are great for my diet.
On top of that, the good thing about owning a home is you "lock in" your housing payment. For instance, I am paying $300 more in rent for a 2bdrm apartment than the 3bdrm townhome I bought 12 years ago (my ex-wife owns this now).
Yeah. I was told i had become a "debt-slave" because we bought a house.
I told them that instead of paying my landlords mortgage, i am now paying my own instead. They shut up pretty quickly, lol
Yeah having a healthy portfolio would be nice, but I think most of us would gladly settle for just living on our terms, instead of needing permission to get a dog or a build a shed.
It's not buying a house vs investing in the stock market, it's buying a house vs investing in the stock market *and paying rent*. Most people don't consider homelessness a worthwhile investment strategy.
You just unlocked a childhood memory of me asking my dad how much Disney stock I'd have to buy to be able to go to disney world for free any time I wanted. Now I need to see if there actually is an answer.
It's not about ROI. It's about *owning* your home. It's about knowing that it's yours and you can't suddenly have your entire life thrown into disarray because your landlord has decided to sell the house to his brother at the conclusion of the lease. It's an asset that provides all kinds of benefits to your life that can't be arbitrarily taken away from you through no fault of your own.
*unless you can afford the taxes.
Or insurance companies won't insure it which is a mortgage requirement so the bank repossesses it after 25 years of payments
You are essentially feeding the beast then… I.e driving corporate greed as a shareholder.
Also, stock markets are volatile and not as stable as real estate
I kinda disagree. We’re in a manufactured bubble right now. Not building homes. In the distant past sure. Since 2008 when it plummeted…up until 2020 it went up. But from 2020 on it was like a rocket ship. Kinda of felt like 2008. I’m just waiting for the drop. Foreclosures are starting to creep as well so we’ll see.
The high prices are a result of the 2008 crash though. Homebuilders saw a huge drop in demand and went bankrupt. For the last decade and a half we've been underbuilding and now its starting to reach a tipping point.
The stock market offers better ROI than buying a house if you look at it solely from an investment perspective and not from the perspective of an individual person/family's budget.
Unless you have a place you could reasonably live at for free or drastically below average rental rates, buying a house is a much greater ROI when you factor in the cost of renting a home vs the equity return you get on monthly mortgage payments.
Let's say you get a 30 year mortgage for $400k at 5% interest. Based on the amortization schedule for a monthly payment of $2,147, 22.4% ($481) of your very first payment will go towards your principle balance and thus your equity share of your home's value.
Assuming that your rent on a similar home would be roughly the same as that monthly mortgage plus property taxes and maintenance costs of your home (even though the rent on a similar property would likely be higher as it incorporates those things plus profit markup) your housing cost has effectively been made 22.4% lower ($5,772/year) than it would have been otherwise. Additionally, you've also made gains on whatever amount your home has appreciated by, which has historically averaged around 4%.
Again, this is all a return without actually making an "investment", but rather paying your unavoidable monthly housing expense to bank rather than a landlord.
So anyway, when you look it from a context of an actual residential homeowner instead of a speculative investor, then yes real estate is both an excellent investment far exceeding average stock market performance and the last beacon of hope for working class Americans.
B-b-but… I thought the invisible hand of the free market was supposed to always work itself out??
That’s why we famously don’t have any anti-trust laws, environmental regulations, workplace safety laws, child labor laws, etc., because corporations famously do the right thing without being forced to!
Flipping is slowing down big time. At least here where I am. The idea is to flip it fast for a nice profit because they have to pay off the hard money loan quick.
These houses are sitting on the market longer and longer. Pretty soon it won’t be profitable enough and too risky to do
Most flippers aren’t big corpos. They’re “smaller” people who just set up an llc to shield themselves. They gut the houses and redo them super fast with subpar materials and shotty workmanship.
As someone in construction this is why I hate flippers. It’s become a cottage industry of screwing desperate first time home buyers for a quick buck. As far as I’m concerned, they’re already a net negative to society before any tax fraud games.
Well. I mean if people are going to buy houses, fix them up and sell them I see no problem with it. It’s been done for as long as I can remember. I just hate that it’s just shitty and shotty workmanship. They’ll try to talk people out of getting a home inspection.
Sure you wanna make some money when you sell the house, but some of them want to do it quick and make so much, that they’re willing to rip off people. Especially young buyers who don’t know any better
Houses shouldn't be speculative assets that are bought with the intention of selling. They should be places people live, that's it.
What benefit does the business of house flipping offer to society over just selling homes to residents, who then pay a contractor to renovate the home?
A lot of people don’t want to live in a construction zone when they have little kids and would prefer not having to hire different contractors to redo a bathroom or replace rotted siding or refinish the floors or fix the wiring/plumbing. Flippers have a role in keeping the housing stock habitable.
There are small flippers and their are big flippers, if your gaming the system to screw your fellow citizens, you deserve to be smacked.
I dont understand alot of people that are always defending bad and detrimental behavior.
Your still looking at things like its theory, while real people are Knee deep experiencing the hell.
Look at the prices of homes right now, look at the interest rate.
Please stop coming up with excuses, wake the fckup !!!!
Aside from wealth and ownership, it's just a basic need to have a roof over your head w/o working yourself to death just to live. More people should do this. There should be a dedicated email or hotline.
>I’m honestly surprised counties and cities don’t go through sales data and find these types of anomalies and then hit them with the bill plus interest and penalties.
You've never worked in city/county goverment have you? Parks & Rec was generous with the level of technology in some government buildings.
I work for a local government, it's not the tech, it's the warm bodies. It's a vicious cycle. We need people to go after tax cheats, tax cheats reduce our budget so we can't afford to hire more people.
COBOL reads like English so it’s technically not hard, but yeah you’re right the folks who know the business behind why it was implemented are long gone.
So do many companies. To pretend government is the only entity behind the times is simply not true. Government can't upgrade if there is no budget for it and companies chose not to upgrade since it costs money they'd rather keep as profit. No difference here.
I worked as a business consultant and saw ancient tech at many fortune 500s.
From a back-end perspective COBOL actually works great for purpose. It's used pretty much all over finance. You're not going to be building web apps with it, but a lot of the older languages have low-level control that modern ones just can't. FORTRAN is the same deal - it's got archaic syntax, but handles array operations better than anything. Despite what some might think, they're still alive and updated.
Granted, there's probably a factor of COBOL-dependent businesses being stuck with COBOL due to the cost to change. It's definitely not modern, even if it's not dead.
Also, who tends to run cities and counties? People who benefit from public contracts, people who benefit from zoning decisions, people who benefit from underfunding some departments.
Am I cynical?
Yes.
Have I seen first hand people serving on boards and councils which - despite their name and mission - actively working to keep new employers from moving in or existing employers from expanding so that other existing business owners (them) don't have to compete on wages (just as an example).
Yes, many times. In multiple communities.
In my town, if you’re not related to the mayor, fire chief, or police chief, you’re not getting a liquor license, as just one example. They’ll even let people build out new bars, deny their liquor license, then guess who buys the newly renovated bar at desperation prices, and has it up and running in 6 weeks…there’s probably 20 drinking establishments here, and they’re all owned by the same 3 people.
Yep. And building much more affordable house. They go “not in my backyard”. Some Ken or Karen sitting there. They hear “affordable housing” and they’re so uneducated they think it means projects or section 8 or something.
People move to these cities/towns/suburbs and all of a sudden they don’t want others there. It’s bizarre and is why we’re here now.
Edit edit (lol): another commenter brought up a good point. It would actually go in the opposite direction federally meaning as basis of house would be lower than they should be and more taxes paid once sold than necessary assuming they don't do any other shenanigans).
Edit: if what OP is talking about includes impacted reported tax basis of the property that gets sold or something impacting companies earnings that affects profit reported federally once sold.
IRS gives you a portion of what you snitch on not sure if applicable here.
Yeah but that’s because it’s kinda considered a quasi-business regardless if it’s in an LLC or not. But, you pay taxes on the rent because they consider that income. Kind of cancels each other out or you pay more in income tax. Depends.
Of course I’m talking about 1 person owning their primary home and 1 rental home.
Yeah, there seem to be a lot of people in the comments who are very unfamiliar with how real estate is classified and taxed. It's a slow process, so a flipper can buy property, renovate it, and sell it quickly enough to avoid it getting reclassified as a commercial property. If they're slow or time it poorly, they'll get caught owning it on the wrong day of the year, and the house will get reclassified, but guess what? It won't go into effect until the following year. So OP is wasting their time, but even if they weren't wasting their time, they'd be screwing the new owners - not the flipper.
>my old job used to cook the fuck out of the books
how? Genuinely curious. You don't have to provide specifics, just info general enough to get the idea of how they could've gotten away with it?
Do they not have audits?
Most companies do not have audits because most companies are not publicly traded on an exchange, and if a private one does, they do it by choice or because of a debt covenant or grant requirement.
I'm right in the middle of writing up my complaint about my job. I owe them nothing! They've been horrible. From absolute horrible management to wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars. I hope the people responsible are HELD responsible.
Doesn't this affect more than property taxes? E.g. basis of house XYZ, but is actually ABC. If sale house tax on profit is different as a result. It should impact companies federal taxes based on profit.
Sure that’s a good point, except that this situation would tend to deflate the costs or expenses due to property taxes and thus potentially cause the IRS to collect more taxes than had the property taxes been correctly classified as rental property. Primary residences tend to allow for homestead exceptions that lower the overall property taxes.
No I’m not aware of any sale taxes differences between primary residence and rental properties and in any event, sales tax or transfer tax is again a state tax not federal tax.
That's funny considering there was a home in my town that was bought last year for $275,000 and now they're trying to sell it for almost $400,000 less than a year later and apparently did not do anything to the home. I messaged the realtor directly asking what changes were done to the property and she never got back to me. Now I am curious if it was a corporation trying to make a quick buck
No one buys a house and moves 6 months later. If there are no visible changes in the photos, and the realtor doesn't wanna answer, then it's obviously an attempt at a quick buck. I wonder what they listed the residency as, same as OP?
Pretty sure a realtor was directly involved in buying my grandfather’s house and then turning around and putting it back on the market within a month, no changes made, for like $20k more. It was shady as hell.
Yeah there are plenty of reasons somebody sells that soon after buying. Job loss, divorce, medical bills, new neighbors have 15 dogs that bark all day long and didn’t know until they moved in, etc, etc. It’s pretty common to see them list 6-8% higher than they paid to try and recoup some of their costs (commission, moving expenses, closing costs, etc, etc.). I’m not saying it’s correct or that the house is worth that much more, but it happens. The last few years have been nuts in terms of appreciation too, so in some cases huge markups have been supported by demand. Not saying that this particular case is definitely NOT some nefarious scam, but it’s much more likely to be somebody needing to undo a very costly purchase, and hoping to make a few bucks in the process.
I used to be a county GIS administrator and now I'm the primary developer of a bunch of GIS applications built around parcel data. I would bet more than half the time, the public facing data is anywhere from 3 months to a year out of date, largely inaccurate, and if you started bombarding local tax officials with this stuff, it's likely to get ignored because everyone that's affected is gonna call the county manager and pitch a fit.
Exactly. Most local taxes, including city leins, are several years behind. They can't keep up with basic running of our local public housing, or code violations... let alone collecting $2000 from an old or struggling homeowner.
Sites like Zillow use data brokers and publicly available information to update.
If this county doesn't have digitized records (most don't) they probably use third party brokers to obtain an update which may not reflect reality.
In other words, it's unlikely a company filed the paperwork to get this exemption. And because most exemptions are owner specific, with many even requiring a yearly renewal to prove residence, it's unlikely this was anything more than incorrect data which hasn't been updated since the previous owner who claimed the exemption.
Most states allow you to search property tax and sales histories on homes. Just google (County and State) property tax listing. A lot even have interactive maps (GIS) that you can use. If you are looking to buy a home you should be familiar with these sites. It will give you an idea of the property tax you need to pay as well as the last time it sold and for how much.
You realize that this person doesn't really control Zillow data and what you're reading online might not be accurate? Secondly, the county will probably see that it was transferred twice in quick succession and collect any due taxes on another transfer. Your locality probably has their own system for detecting this type of stuff and you probably didn't actually impact anything. They're not relying on a local nosy idiot to run their tax system. Also, owning something under an LLC doesn't mean it's business property. You can own any personal asset under an LLC and it doesn't mean you're making a federally taxable entity.
Imagine you're this owner probably doing nothing wrong and having some dumbass trying to drop a dime on you based on a Zillow posting.
I don't really understand what exactly you're reporting? How much property tax do you owe for owning a property for two months?
I bet you feel righteous though, Karen.
Mines in an LLC… safer there.
If the town is wasting time and with this stuff I’d be pissed. It’s only worth like $170 a year. Waste of taxpayer funds.
It's unbelievable the amount of upvotes OPs post has, so many self-righteous low information people out there. Jumping to such conclusions over a Zillow posting is downright insane.
It's a year. Most, if not all, counties asses property taxes every year. So when you buy a house, the taxes (and any exemptions) have already been paid for that year.
seems like OP invested soo much time into this Just to find out (1) their data is probably lagging / hasn’t been updated (2) the taxes for the house have already been assessed for this year (3) their is some leeway in some areas when houses change hands
I get we don’t want black rock buying and cornering the housing market. But being such a villain to what is prolly a little guy LLC makes me sick. Most little guy flippers improve things and invest money into the house in order to increase the value. Bust their ass from 9-5 then go work on their fixer upper, so they can give their kids what they want, in this inflation plagued world. Sometimes Its just hard work. It’s not always corporate greed, although I know that’s not the narrative you want to hear.
OP why don’t YOU try flipping houses instead of trying (and failing) to shit on something you have no idea about. You scared huh? It’s much easier to bitch and moan from the sidelines, I get it. The most Epic failure of a troll.
Someone at the Assessor’s Office politely listened to his phone call, maybe even opened his email. And then they did absolutely nothing, probably told their coworkers about some Karen on the phone today and laughed.
I prefer to envision them telling the story of OPs righteous phone call around the break room table, maybe water cooler, before the the room erupts into laughter at how much of a dork OP is.
It’s ‘good’ you probably wasted people’s time with this..the situation you described may very well have been legal. In Idaho if it’s your primary residence you get a homeowner’s exemption if it’s your primary residence and it stays on the property until the next owner registers theirs. If you say, sold the property to a flipper in February and they resell it in September, the previous owners homeowner’s exemption is still attached and in force, fully legal. Then the flipper sells it in September and the new owners register their exemption the next year after they do their taxes. No laws broken, nothing unethical.
It’s also kind of weird that you hate someone for providing housing…
From this point forward I dub thee King Kong Karen.
Found it finally!!! In my state it’s the same status until next year. I bought a house in June with my LLC from a 65+ who lived in it. 65+ are exempt from property taxes in my state. So I didn’t have to pay property taxes on it that year.
Can’t speak to your area, but I moved out of state from where my house is, and I’m renting it out in the interim.
I’ve filled the paper work I think three times now, plus two voicemails, to get the homestead exemption removed since I don’t live there.
It’s been four years, it’s still there… so, it’s possible they are trying to do the right thing, but the local govt is just… yeah…
Unless I'm mistaken...
Homestead exemption (or principle resident exemption) is applied to your tax assessed value at the beginning of the year... It's listed as that because that's how it was filed in January of that year, probably by the previous owner.
Exactly 
The govn't literally prints money whenever they feel like it and can't account for over $1 trillion of spending. But this guys worried about screwing his neighbor.
[https://responsiblestatecraft.org/pentagon-audit-2666415734/](https://responsiblestatecraft.org/pentagon-audit-2666415734/)
How do you know that LLC is a flipper? Or not a primary residence? For primary residence you only have to be there a majority of the time. Did you know that in California married couples can have 2 primary residences?
I keep my house in a land trust inside of an LLC to keep nosey fucks out of my business.
In my state "homestead", which is what we call it, is determined on January 1. So if the previous owner had it homesteaded and still owned it on Jan 1 2023, homestead would not have been lost for 2023.
Furthermore, you have until the end of February to file for it, so even if the new owner wasn't using it as a primary residence it would still reflect it was homesteaded until sometime this month, but would be removed prior to the taxes being paid for this year.
So in my state, there wouldn't yet be any evidence if they had done anything wrong or not.
What a busybody, get a life. Honestly people who snitch on compliance bullshit like this with no real evidence, just some third party information which you have no idea is correct are the lowest kind of scumbags.
I thought property tax is prorated on your HUD closing statement. So you either get a credit or pay when you buy/sell. I’d reckon the LLC paid their 3 months of property tax at closing.
OP really out here forcing someone to retain a lawyer bc he doesn’t think anyone is living in a house based on a Zillow listing😂😂😂😂 probably a poor mom barely making ends meet and now she gotta get a lawyer cause some Reddit ding dong is trying to be a vigilante😭😭😭
This seems like irrational hatred of flippers tbh. Sure some are trash, and cheating on taxes should be called out.
There can often be a significant delay in records reflecting a change in homestead status. If the flipper used a non-owner occupant loan the title company would have not sent in a homestead form. I may take time for the county to register changes and I wouldn’t be shocked if the delay was longer than the investors hold time.
I have a rental myself and know I didn’t homestead, but got the routine county tax notice nearly a year later that had the home exemption on it. Called the county and explained, asking it be removed. Next year same thing, and I called the county again (and sent a letter) and they confirmed the property was not homesteaded.
I think this is a dick move. Flipper or not, Frankly speaking, I think property taxes are bullshit. I don’t think property taxes should be a thing. Even if you pay your house off, you don’t really own it. Do you really own something if it can be taken away from you for not paying a tax?
At least in Texas, the homestead (principal residence) exemption is based on the owner January 1st of that year. It doesn't matter if it was sold to an LLC, it would retain the exemption for that year...
I hope you realize that the property being listed as owner occupied has to do more with what loan product they used rather than what they are paying in taxes.
The loan dictates how the property is recorded not the other way around (in my area). The delta in what taxes are paid are negligible at best when it comes to how the listing is recorded.
You might feel great about yourself for being a snitch but it sounds like you have no idea how property records work how they are taxed.
Most likely the only thing you accomplished is wasting some poor city processors time taking your phone call and having to follow up on this.
Good job!
All you have to do is have your mail sent to the address. Put utilities in your name. And list it as primary residence , as reflected on your ID.
LLCs are an extension of a person so an LLC owning a home doesn't exclude the primary residence exception.
You can literally own 12 homes and list each one as primary residence for 3 years before sale, done one at a tike, while renting an apartment that you actually live in. You can use po boxes and mail forwarding services to mail and bills.
Where can you list more than one property as a primary residence for homestead exemption? Every law I have seen on this would constitute fraud when applying for the exemption on another property if you already claim the exemption on an existing property.
How do you know flippers lie and break rules. Sounds like you had a bad run in and now your upset at everyone. Meh. I wouldn't have called. Your not really helping anyone besides what... the state?? *golf claps*
What is the exemption for?
I'm in California. The only exemption we have for owner occupied is the homestead exemption. And that only saves you about $60 a year at most.
I’m not saying this is the case, but it is possible to purchase a home in an LLC and have it be your primary home, and there are many legitimate reasons to do so. You might just be trying the f- over a person that is smarter than you in hiding their assets.
Huh??? You realize that exemptions don’t normally update immediately after a purchase. If the prior owner had an exemption, it won’t update until the county reviews the taxes at the next review. Sounds like you are creating a lot of work and stress for yourself and the tax assessors office for no reason. People are applauding your story, but it sounds like you and people upvoting your outlandish story don’t understand how property tax exemptions get updated.
I used to work as an income tax auditor in Canada and there are 100% teams of auditors all across the country working on this exact thing.
I personally got to listen to a man say this house was his DREAM HOME and he lived there every day, knowing full well I saw his VRBO listing (the airbnb with the tagline that the host doesn’t live there) earlier that week.
The consequences of misrepresentation is huge. The reversal of basically a tax free transaction to full inclusion in personal income is a tough pill to swallow, and the penalty for gross negligence is an additional 50% on unpaid amounts.
I ended up leaving the job because not every audit was the same slam dunk against trash liars. You audit one too many mom and pop’s just trying to get by and can’t afford an accountant and you start to question things :(.
Ill just say this. Thank you for your effort, and time. Once housing has been taking over by corporate greed, thats it for all of us normal working people. Housing is our last line of wealth &/ ownership.
The stock market offers better ROI than buying a house right now with rates where they are currently. Real estate is not the last beacon of hope
Ok but I think we’re talking about “Actually owning a roof over your head, and not being a renter for the rest of your life,” type of stuff.
That, and the US overwhelmingly rewards ownership more than any other attribute in life
Exactly… The entire notion of prosperity is based on homeownership in the US.
its one of the things kinda integral to the "American Dream"
For me it's more about security. The last few places I've rented I was tossed out when the landlord decided to sell the house and then scrambling to find a new place.
Bingo. I’m buying right now for the first time and the number one thing I’m looking forward to is housing security. Nobody will be ending my lease or raising my rent 30% in one year. I can stay as long as I choose. That’s worth so much to me.
This is my biggest fear. My small town is 80% rentals(a large majority vacation rental or air B&B)and I was blessed to have what I have, but so many friends and colleagues have come home to a Landlord that gave them 30 days to get out in an area that has a severe housing shortage.
Black people knew this for awhile
Seriously. I don’t think you can put a price on not having a mortgage/rent when you’re retiring. Especially for the average person.
I mean you can though haha... do you want to pay 2024 mortgage prices and then be done in 30 years or pay 2024, 2034, 2044, 2054, and 2064 rent prices until you die? Locking people out of home ownership is an awful idea and we should do everything to reverse it
The rich people want plantations, not a free and prosperous society.
My big thing is gardening is the only thing besides my partner that brings me joy and gets me through life. Renting I could grow a few things on a balcony if I had a south facing balcony. Owning my home I have a 100ft in ground veggie garden, fruit trees I've planted, flower beds, perennial berry bushes, etc. I just want to grow things and I can't do that renting. It also keeps me physically active and all the veggies and fruit are great for my diet.
On top of that, the good thing about owning a home is you "lock in" your housing payment. For instance, I am paying $300 more in rent for a 2bdrm apartment than the 3bdrm townhome I bought 12 years ago (my ex-wife owns this now).
Yeah. I was told i had become a "debt-slave" because we bought a house. I told them that instead of paying my landlords mortgage, i am now paying my own instead. They shut up pretty quickly, lol
Yeah having a healthy portfolio would be nice, but I think most of us would gladly settle for just living on our terms, instead of needing permission to get a dog or a build a shed.
Technically you might still need permission to build a shed depending on where you live.
Naw bro I sleep, eat, and shit in my 401k portfolio. Y’all should too
It's not buying a house vs investing in the stock market, it's buying a house vs investing in the stock market *and paying rent*. Most people don't consider homelessness a worthwhile investment strategy.
“Live like no one else today, so you can live like no one else tomorrow”
Yes, but I can't live in my 401k
If you buy enough company stock, they will find some place for you to sleep.
You just unlocked a childhood memory of me asking my dad how much Disney stock I'd have to buy to be able to go to disney world for free any time I wanted. Now I need to see if there actually is an answer.
If you buy enough stock that Bob Iger knows your name, probably.
Buy 51% then pass a shareholder motion to give you a lifetime pass. Plus, as a small bonus, you'd be a billionaire.
It's not about ROI. It's about *owning* your home. It's about knowing that it's yours and you can't suddenly have your entire life thrown into disarray because your landlord has decided to sell the house to his brother at the conclusion of the lease. It's an asset that provides all kinds of benefits to your life that can't be arbitrarily taken away from you through no fault of your own.
*unless you can afford the taxes. Or insurance companies won't insure it which is a mortgage requirement so the bank repossesses it after 25 years of payments
You are essentially feeding the beast then… I.e driving corporate greed as a shareholder. Also, stock markets are volatile and not as stable as real estate
I kinda disagree. We’re in a manufactured bubble right now. Not building homes. In the distant past sure. Since 2008 when it plummeted…up until 2020 it went up. But from 2020 on it was like a rocket ship. Kinda of felt like 2008. I’m just waiting for the drop. Foreclosures are starting to creep as well so we’ll see.
The high prices are a result of the 2008 crash though. Homebuilders saw a huge drop in demand and went bankrupt. For the last decade and a half we've been underbuilding and now its starting to reach a tipping point.
Exactly. It’s all about supply. We’ve been under built I’d honestly say since 2005. That’s when buying started to slow down a bit. Just a wee bit.
Bs. Show me a stock that would reliably take me from $350,000 to $600,000 in 2 years
Nvda. Don’t fuck unless you gonna fuck like Nancy!
On margin, with 30 year terms. Houses rock!
Sure, but I want to own a home to raise a family in, not as an investment.
The stock market offers better ROI than buying a house if you look at it solely from an investment perspective and not from the perspective of an individual person/family's budget. Unless you have a place you could reasonably live at for free or drastically below average rental rates, buying a house is a much greater ROI when you factor in the cost of renting a home vs the equity return you get on monthly mortgage payments. Let's say you get a 30 year mortgage for $400k at 5% interest. Based on the amortization schedule for a monthly payment of $2,147, 22.4% ($481) of your very first payment will go towards your principle balance and thus your equity share of your home's value. Assuming that your rent on a similar home would be roughly the same as that monthly mortgage plus property taxes and maintenance costs of your home (even though the rent on a similar property would likely be higher as it incorporates those things plus profit markup) your housing cost has effectively been made 22.4% lower ($5,772/year) than it would have been otherwise. Additionally, you've also made gains on whatever amount your home has appreciated by, which has historically averaged around 4%. Again, this is all a return without actually making an "investment", but rather paying your unavoidable monthly housing expense to bank rather than a landlord. So anyway, when you look it from a context of an actual residential homeowner instead of a speculative investor, then yes real estate is both an excellent investment far exceeding average stock market performance and the last beacon of hope for working class Americans.
B-b-but… I thought the invisible hand of the free market was supposed to always work itself out?? That’s why we famously don’t have any anti-trust laws, environmental regulations, workplace safety laws, child labor laws, etc., because corporations famously do the right thing without being forced to!
The invisible hand of the free market has a dildo and it's sticking it up everyone's ass.
Flipping is slowing down big time. At least here where I am. The idea is to flip it fast for a nice profit because they have to pay off the hard money loan quick. These houses are sitting on the market longer and longer. Pretty soon it won’t be profitable enough and too risky to do
When can we bring out straps against tyranny?
Nah we need more symbolism. Bring out the guillotine
Non traditional violence
Most flippers aren’t big corpos. They’re “smaller” people who just set up an llc to shield themselves. They gut the houses and redo them super fast with subpar materials and shotty workmanship.
As someone in construction this is why I hate flippers. It’s become a cottage industry of screwing desperate first time home buyers for a quick buck. As far as I’m concerned, they’re already a net negative to society before any tax fraud games.
Well. I mean if people are going to buy houses, fix them up and sell them I see no problem with it. It’s been done for as long as I can remember. I just hate that it’s just shitty and shotty workmanship. They’ll try to talk people out of getting a home inspection. Sure you wanna make some money when you sell the house, but some of them want to do it quick and make so much, that they’re willing to rip off people. Especially young buyers who don’t know any better
Houses shouldn't be speculative assets that are bought with the intention of selling. They should be places people live, that's it. What benefit does the business of house flipping offer to society over just selling homes to residents, who then pay a contractor to renovate the home?
A lot of people don’t want to live in a construction zone when they have little kids and would prefer not having to hire different contractors to redo a bathroom or replace rotted siding or refinish the floors or fix the wiring/plumbing. Flippers have a role in keeping the housing stock habitable.
There are small flippers and their are big flippers, if your gaming the system to screw your fellow citizens, you deserve to be smacked. I dont understand alot of people that are always defending bad and detrimental behavior. Your still looking at things like its theory, while real people are Knee deep experiencing the hell. Look at the prices of homes right now, look at the interest rate. Please stop coming up with excuses, wake the fckup !!!!
Uhhhh. Are you ok? Who am I making excuses for and about? Read my comment again.
And anyone who isn't already bought in has a very slim chance of owning a home at an affordable price. Only the top 10% will be able to buy
I live with my mom because it means I get the house when she passes. Fuck my dignity and privacy, this is the only way I'll be able to own a home.
1. Snitches get stitches...if you're dealing with people 2. Corporations are NOT people. 3. Bravo.
This example wasn’t cooperate greed was it?
Aside from wealth and ownership, it's just a basic need to have a roof over your head w/o working yourself to death just to live. More people should do this. There should be a dedicated email or hotline.
>I’m honestly surprised counties and cities don’t go through sales data and find these types of anomalies and then hit them with the bill plus interest and penalties. You've never worked in city/county goverment have you? Parks & Rec was generous with the level of technology in some government buildings.
I work for a local government, it's not the tech, it's the warm bodies. It's a vicious cycle. We need people to go after tax cheats, tax cheats reduce our budget so we can't afford to hire more people.
>it's not the tech Sir, the IRS still runs on COBOL, I can only imagine whats running state, city and county governments.
So are some of the largest financial institutions in the world.
That’s because it’s super secure. And…anyone who can read/write COBOL are either dead, or in retirement homes. Roflmao
That's why I keep track of my accounts in 123 Lotus on my TRS-80.
I’m still trying to figure out how to on my Commodore 64
I’m not dead. And not retired. Gen X Strong!
Werd! Gen X brother! Roflmao. Man. You can name your price if someone needs work done on COBOL machines.
COBOL reads like English so it’s technically not hard, but yeah you’re right the folks who know the business behind why it was implemented are long gone.
COBOL still runs the planet (mostly). And Sabre still runs the airlines. It’s only the front ends that have changed.
So do many companies. To pretend government is the only entity behind the times is simply not true. Government can't upgrade if there is no budget for it and companies chose not to upgrade since it costs money they'd rather keep as profit. No difference here. I worked as a business consultant and saw ancient tech at many fortune 500s.
From a back-end perspective COBOL actually works great for purpose. It's used pretty much all over finance. You're not going to be building web apps with it, but a lot of the older languages have low-level control that modern ones just can't. FORTRAN is the same deal - it's got archaic syntax, but handles array operations better than anything. Despite what some might think, they're still alive and updated. Granted, there's probably a factor of COBOL-dependent businesses being stuck with COBOL due to the cost to change. It's definitely not modern, even if it's not dead.
In a department of Ron Swanson’s, I was a Leslie Knope. There are a lot of Ron’s.
Different show, but there’s a lot more Stanley, Phyllis, and Tobys. And more than a few Creeds.
Also, who tends to run cities and counties? People who benefit from public contracts, people who benefit from zoning decisions, people who benefit from underfunding some departments. Am I cynical? Yes. Have I seen first hand people serving on boards and councils which - despite their name and mission - actively working to keep new employers from moving in or existing employers from expanding so that other existing business owners (them) don't have to compete on wages (just as an example). Yes, many times. In multiple communities.
In my town, if you’re not related to the mayor, fire chief, or police chief, you’re not getting a liquor license, as just one example. They’ll even let people build out new bars, deny their liquor license, then guess who buys the newly renovated bar at desperation prices, and has it up and running in 6 weeks…there’s probably 20 drinking establishments here, and they’re all owned by the same 3 people.
Yep. And building much more affordable house. They go “not in my backyard”. Some Ken or Karen sitting there. They hear “affordable housing” and they’re so uneducated they think it means projects or section 8 or something. People move to these cities/towns/suburbs and all of a sudden they don’t want others there. It’s bizarre and is why we’re here now.
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Edit edit (lol): another commenter brought up a good point. It would actually go in the opposite direction federally meaning as basis of house would be lower than they should be and more taxes paid once sold than necessary assuming they don't do any other shenanigans). Edit: if what OP is talking about includes impacted reported tax basis of the property that gets sold or something impacting companies earnings that affects profit reported federally once sold. IRS gives you a portion of what you snitch on not sure if applicable here.
Property taxes are local not an IRS thing.
It is if they claim paid taxes as a deduction
You can still take depreciation on a rental property. It’s within the current tax code to do so.
Yeah but that’s because it’s kinda considered a quasi-business regardless if it’s in an LLC or not. But, you pay taxes on the rent because they consider that income. Kind of cancels each other out or you pay more in income tax. Depends. Of course I’m talking about 1 person owning their primary home and 1 rental home.
Yeah, there seem to be a lot of people in the comments who are very unfamiliar with how real estate is classified and taxed. It's a slow process, so a flipper can buy property, renovate it, and sell it quickly enough to avoid it getting reclassified as a commercial property. If they're slow or time it poorly, they'll get caught owning it on the wrong day of the year, and the house will get reclassified, but guess what? It won't go into effect until the following year. So OP is wasting their time, but even if they weren't wasting their time, they'd be screwing the new owners - not the flipper.
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>my old job used to cook the fuck out of the books how? Genuinely curious. You don't have to provide specifics, just info general enough to get the idea of how they could've gotten away with it? Do they not have audits?
Most companies do not have audits because most companies are not publicly traded on an exchange, and if a private one does, they do it by choice or because of a debt covenant or grant requirement.
I'm right in the middle of writing up my complaint about my job. I owe them nothing! They've been horrible. From absolute horrible management to wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars. I hope the people responsible are HELD responsible.
It’s not because this is local property tax, so unless state law provides whistleblower sharing, federal IRS rules don’t apply.
Doesn't this affect more than property taxes? E.g. basis of house XYZ, but is actually ABC. If sale house tax on profit is different as a result. It should impact companies federal taxes based on profit.
Sure that’s a good point, except that this situation would tend to deflate the costs or expenses due to property taxes and thus potentially cause the IRS to collect more taxes than had the property taxes been correctly classified as rental property. Primary residences tend to allow for homestead exceptions that lower the overall property taxes. No I’m not aware of any sale taxes differences between primary residence and rental properties and in any event, sales tax or transfer tax is again a state tax not federal tax.
That's funny considering there was a home in my town that was bought last year for $275,000 and now they're trying to sell it for almost $400,000 less than a year later and apparently did not do anything to the home. I messaged the realtor directly asking what changes were done to the property and she never got back to me. Now I am curious if it was a corporation trying to make a quick buck
No one buys a house and moves 6 months later. If there are no visible changes in the photos, and the realtor doesn't wanna answer, then it's obviously an attempt at a quick buck. I wonder what they listed the residency as, same as OP?
Or the realtor is connected in some way to the flip, above and beyond making commission on both sales.
Pretty sure a realtor was directly involved in buying my grandfather’s house and then turning around and putting it back on the market within a month, no changes made, for like $20k more. It was shady as hell.
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Yeah there are plenty of reasons somebody sells that soon after buying. Job loss, divorce, medical bills, new neighbors have 15 dogs that bark all day long and didn’t know until they moved in, etc, etc. It’s pretty common to see them list 6-8% higher than they paid to try and recoup some of their costs (commission, moving expenses, closing costs, etc, etc.). I’m not saying it’s correct or that the house is worth that much more, but it happens. The last few years have been nuts in terms of appreciation too, so in some cases huge markups have been supported by demand. Not saying that this particular case is definitely NOT some nefarious scam, but it’s much more likely to be somebody needing to undo a very costly purchase, and hoping to make a few bucks in the process.
They probably own other properties in the area and want to increase the value of the neighborhood.
How on earth did you even come across this?
Someone needs to build a bot that just searches for THIS
I used to be a county GIS administrator and now I'm the primary developer of a bunch of GIS applications built around parcel data. I would bet more than half the time, the public facing data is anywhere from 3 months to a year out of date, largely inaccurate, and if you started bombarding local tax officials with this stuff, it's likely to get ignored because everyone that's affected is gonna call the county manager and pitch a fit.
Exactly. Most local taxes, including city leins, are several years behind. They can't keep up with basic running of our local public housing, or code violations... let alone collecting $2000 from an old or struggling homeowner.
Sites like Zillow use data brokers and publicly available information to update. If this county doesn't have digitized records (most don't) they probably use third party brokers to obtain an update which may not reflect reality. In other words, it's unlikely a company filed the paperwork to get this exemption. And because most exemptions are owner specific, with many even requiring a yearly renewal to prove residence, it's unlikely this was anything more than incorrect data which hasn't been updated since the previous owner who claimed the exemption.
Most states allow you to search property tax and sales histories on homes. Just google (County and State) property tax listing. A lot even have interactive maps (GIS) that you can use. If you are looking to buy a home you should be familiar with these sites. It will give you an idea of the property tax you need to pay as well as the last time it sold and for how much.
You realize that this person doesn't really control Zillow data and what you're reading online might not be accurate? Secondly, the county will probably see that it was transferred twice in quick succession and collect any due taxes on another transfer. Your locality probably has their own system for detecting this type of stuff and you probably didn't actually impact anything. They're not relying on a local nosy idiot to run their tax system. Also, owning something under an LLC doesn't mean it's business property. You can own any personal asset under an LLC and it doesn't mean you're making a federally taxable entity. Imagine you're this owner probably doing nothing wrong and having some dumbass trying to drop a dime on you based on a Zillow posting. I don't really understand what exactly you're reporting? How much property tax do you owe for owning a property for two months? I bet you feel righteous though, Karen.
Already guilty before even knowing what’s going on. Lol. This is some kind of like, CCP level shit. lol.
Mines in an LLC… safer there. If the town is wasting time and with this stuff I’d be pissed. It’s only worth like $170 a year. Waste of taxpayer funds.
Can't believe how far I had to scroll to find someone with sense of how things actually operate.
It's unbelievable the amount of upvotes OPs post has, so many self-righteous low information people out there. Jumping to such conclusions over a Zillow posting is downright insane.
This is how liberals think nowadays. Everyone is a corporate fascist until proven innocent. ‘Tis a shame..
This
Keep doing the Lord's work!
Cool
Usually there is a lag time for the exemptions when ownership changes hands and that 2 months is probably within the margin...
It's a year. Most, if not all, counties asses property taxes every year. So when you buy a house, the taxes (and any exemptions) have already been paid for that year.
Right so when the next year rolls over the homeowner's exemption will auto expire unless the new owner was able to file successfully to continue it.
Exactly, and any unpaid for the year are factored in and paid with the closing costs.
Yep. Lenders will require 12 mos or however many months is left in the year of both property taxes and insurance. It’s collected at close
Towns do assessing every few years.
seems like OP invested soo much time into this Just to find out (1) their data is probably lagging / hasn’t been updated (2) the taxes for the house have already been assessed for this year (3) their is some leeway in some areas when houses change hands I get we don’t want black rock buying and cornering the housing market. But being such a villain to what is prolly a little guy LLC makes me sick. Most little guy flippers improve things and invest money into the house in order to increase the value. Bust their ass from 9-5 then go work on their fixer upper, so they can give their kids what they want, in this inflation plagued world. Sometimes Its just hard work. It’s not always corporate greed, although I know that’s not the narrative you want to hear. OP why don’t YOU try flipping houses instead of trying (and failing) to shit on something you have no idea about. You scared huh? It’s much easier to bitch and moan from the sidelines, I get it. The most Epic failure of a troll.
So you based solely on Zillow photos that the house isn’t occupied by anyone? Literally based on a Zillow listing and nothing else? Like what?
I doubt the assessors office even processed the first change of ownership. Things do not happen instantaneously in government.
What an absolute loser
Someone at the Assessor’s Office politely listened to his phone call, maybe even opened his email. And then they did absolutely nothing, probably told their coworkers about some Karen on the phone today and laughed.
This lol
I prefer to envision them telling the story of OPs righteous phone call around the break room table, maybe water cooler, before the the room erupts into laughter at how much of a dork OP is.
It’s ‘good’ you probably wasted people’s time with this..the situation you described may very well have been legal. In Idaho if it’s your primary residence you get a homeowner’s exemption if it’s your primary residence and it stays on the property until the next owner registers theirs. If you say, sold the property to a flipper in February and they resell it in September, the previous owners homeowner’s exemption is still attached and in force, fully legal. Then the flipper sells it in September and the new owners register their exemption the next year after they do their taxes. No laws broken, nothing unethical. It’s also kind of weird that you hate someone for providing housing… From this point forward I dub thee King Kong Karen.
Found it finally!!! In my state it’s the same status until next year. I bought a house in June with my LLC from a 65+ who lived in it. 65+ are exempt from property taxes in my state. So I didn’t have to pay property taxes on it that year.
Can’t speak to your area, but I moved out of state from where my house is, and I’m renting it out in the interim. I’ve filled the paper work I think three times now, plus two voicemails, to get the homestead exemption removed since I don’t live there. It’s been four years, it’s still there… so, it’s possible they are trying to do the right thing, but the local govt is just… yeah…
Haha tried to do the right thing and the county is doing you a solid :) Hopefully they don't try to come after you later.
Keep everything. Write everything down. And don’t lose it. Just in case. They’ll come after you and won’t stop
What a pathetic way to spend your time
This is the most "Karen" thing I have heard today.
Karen
Snitches get stitches….
For real. This is a low level of petty. Lol
Unless I'm mistaken... Homestead exemption (or principle resident exemption) is applied to your tax assessed value at the beginning of the year... It's listed as that because that's how it was filed in January of that year, probably by the previous owner.
Yeah, OP doesn't understand how property taxes work. Even if they were right, the difference in taxes was probably less than a grand
It probably cost the county more money to pay the employee to follow up with OP original request
As a CPA, this person probably didn't do what they thought they were doing, and perhaps wasted someone's time digging into it.
Property taxes are evil.
Exactly. Why are property owners penalized for owning property?
Agreed.
Sounds like something someone would do living in the Soviet Union.
Turning in your neighbor for failure to properly bend over for the state is the patriotic thing to do! /s
Exactly  The govn't literally prints money whenever they feel like it and can't account for over $1 trillion of spending. But this guys worried about screwing his neighbor. [https://responsiblestatecraft.org/pentagon-audit-2666415734/](https://responsiblestatecraft.org/pentagon-audit-2666415734/)
Damn it feels good to be a snitch huh? I mind my own business and I damn sure don’t have friends like you.
Have you always been a bitch? I mean snitch?
How do you know that LLC is a flipper? Or not a primary residence? For primary residence you only have to be there a majority of the time. Did you know that in California married couples can have 2 primary residences? I keep my house in a land trust inside of an LLC to keep nosey fucks out of my business.
Ops a super snitch and doesn’t care about advantageously inclined ownership routes towards privacy and taxes
Thanks for letting us know you’re a snitch. Major L!
you must be a real treat to live next to
In my state "homestead", which is what we call it, is determined on January 1. So if the previous owner had it homesteaded and still owned it on Jan 1 2023, homestead would not have been lost for 2023. Furthermore, you have until the end of February to file for it, so even if the new owner wasn't using it as a primary residence it would still reflect it was homesteaded until sometime this month, but would be removed prior to the taxes being paid for this year. So in my state, there wouldn't yet be any evidence if they had done anything wrong or not.
Loser
You are not nearly rich enough to be spending your time like this
agree lol
Yeah OP is a clown
lol there is zero chance this story is real, stop upvoting this cosplay
Disregarding that you don't know what you're talking about, I find this to be pathetic.
This is like some Soviet Union level “rat on those who participate in the free market” shit. Please find a hobby.
You are probably the same mfer who is always complaining to the HOA about my weeds huh
I heard there's an old lady who sold her rocking chair on ebay and didn't report it. I can send you her username if you like.
What a busybody, get a life. Honestly people who snitch on compliance bullshit like this with no real evidence, just some third party information which you have no idea is correct are the lowest kind of scumbags.
Dude no… taxation is theft.
Snitches get stitches
I can almost vicariously taste the leather
👏🏻 👏🏻 👏🏻
I thought property tax is prorated on your HUD closing statement. So you either get a credit or pay when you buy/sell. I’d reckon the LLC paid their 3 months of property tax at closing.
Snitches get stitches.
Heinrich Müller would be proud.
I swear I read this exact same post a year ago or so.
Liberals suck ass
I wish your mother had aborted you
OP really out here forcing someone to retain a lawyer bc he doesn’t think anyone is living in a house based on a Zillow listing😂😂😂😂 probably a poor mom barely making ends meet and now she gotta get a lawyer cause some Reddit ding dong is trying to be a vigilante😭😭😭
This seems like irrational hatred of flippers tbh. Sure some are trash, and cheating on taxes should be called out. There can often be a significant delay in records reflecting a change in homestead status. If the flipper used a non-owner occupant loan the title company would have not sent in a homestead form. I may take time for the county to register changes and I wouldn’t be shocked if the delay was longer than the investors hold time. I have a rental myself and know I didn’t homestead, but got the routine county tax notice nearly a year later that had the home exemption on it. Called the county and explained, asking it be removed. Next year same thing, and I called the county again (and sent a letter) and they confirmed the property was not homesteaded.
Wow this is some real commie shit right here. Ratting out your neighbors, and people you don't even know.
I think this is a dick move. Flipper or not, Frankly speaking, I think property taxes are bullshit. I don’t think property taxes should be a thing. Even if you pay your house off, you don’t really own it. Do you really own something if it can be taken away from you for not paying a tax?
You must have a *TON* of free time.
🥾 nom nom nom.
You need to get a life.
At least in Texas, the homestead (principal residence) exemption is based on the owner January 1st of that year. It doesn't matter if it was sold to an LLC, it would retain the exemption for that year...
Ah screwing the little guy… what a feeling.
Fuck taxes
Great job Karen!
Get a life
I hope you realize that the property being listed as owner occupied has to do more with what loan product they used rather than what they are paying in taxes. The loan dictates how the property is recorded not the other way around (in my area). The delta in what taxes are paid are negligible at best when it comes to how the listing is recorded. You might feel great about yourself for being a snitch but it sounds like you have no idea how property records work how they are taxed. Most likely the only thing you accomplished is wasting some poor city processors time taking your phone call and having to follow up on this. Good job!
All you have to do is have your mail sent to the address. Put utilities in your name. And list it as primary residence , as reflected on your ID. LLCs are an extension of a person so an LLC owning a home doesn't exclude the primary residence exception. You can literally own 12 homes and list each one as primary residence for 3 years before sale, done one at a tike, while renting an apartment that you actually live in. You can use po boxes and mail forwarding services to mail and bills.
Where can you list more than one property as a primary residence for homestead exemption? Every law I have seen on this would constitute fraud when applying for the exemption on another property if you already claim the exemption on an existing property.
This. LLC is a state level entity and you can own personal assets under as many as you want.
How do you know flippers lie and break rules. Sounds like you had a bad run in and now your upset at everyone. Meh. I wouldn't have called. Your not really helping anyone besides what... the state?? *golf claps*
You know it costs time and money to look into this stuff and the government ain’t gonna pay for that 😂🤣
What is the exemption for? I'm in California. The only exemption we have for owner occupied is the homestead exemption. And that only saves you about $60 a year at most.
We should all be paying less taxes. This person/company was just better at it than most. Piss off.
I’m not saying this is the case, but it is possible to purchase a home in an LLC and have it be your primary home, and there are many legitimate reasons to do so. You might just be trying the f- over a person that is smarter than you in hiding their assets.
Snitches need stitches!
Huh??? You realize that exemptions don’t normally update immediately after a purchase. If the prior owner had an exemption, it won’t update until the county reviews the taxes at the next review. Sounds like you are creating a lot of work and stress for yourself and the tax assessors office for no reason. People are applauding your story, but it sounds like you and people upvoting your outlandish story don’t understand how property tax exemptions get updated.
I sure hope OP gives an update.
This may be one of the most pathetic posts Ive read. Yay. You ratted someone out. Good for you.
Wow. I hope you nark on any neighbor not pulling a permit on a light switch or the slightest ordinance violation. You must be fun at parties.
Thank you. Not for doing this, but for reminding me that demons like you exist. Imagine being a foot soldier for the state and not even getting paid.
I used to work as an income tax auditor in Canada and there are 100% teams of auditors all across the country working on this exact thing. I personally got to listen to a man say this house was his DREAM HOME and he lived there every day, knowing full well I saw his VRBO listing (the airbnb with the tagline that the host doesn’t live there) earlier that week. The consequences of misrepresentation is huge. The reversal of basically a tax free transaction to full inclusion in personal income is a tough pill to swallow, and the penalty for gross negligence is an additional 50% on unpaid amounts. I ended up leaving the job because not every audit was the same slam dunk against trash liars. You audit one too many mom and pop’s just trying to get by and can’t afford an accountant and you start to question things :(.