Taxes in Shawnee and Lenexa... (short sale, mortgage, buying a home)

[Versatile]

Now Tina; don't let it get to you. In the future any newbies can go to the court house in person and check them out theirselves. irrc

[RjRobb2]

Originally Posted by TinaMcG

It sure is a handy website. I just wish our real estate agent had bothered to use it when we were buying our house. The MLS sheet quoted one tax number, the title company another -- $2500 higher. I repeatedly asked our agent to check on the taxes because they were a big factor in our decision, and we might have backed out of the deal if she had bothered to take two minutes and check. We still lived in Chicago and had no idea the info was so readily available online. So one month later, after several requests for the information, she finally got back to us, and sure enough, the higher amount was accurate. That's $200 a month more than we had planned to pay. By then, it was too late to back out. We were closing on the sale a few days later.

Ugh, don't get me started on dealing with that real estate company. That was a nightmare experience on so many levels.

If you had not closed, it was not too late to back out. You can back out all the way up to closing if you choose too.

[sparksharp]

Originally Posted by TinaMcG

It sure is a handy website. I just wish our real estate agent had bothered to use it when we were buying our house. The MLS sheet quoted one tax number, the title company another -- $2500 higher. I repeatedly asked our agent to check on the taxes because they were a big factor in our decision, and we might have backed out of the deal if she had bothered to take two minutes and check. We still lived in Chicago and had no idea the info was so readily available online. So one month later, after several requests for the information, she finally got back to us, and sure enough, the higher amount was accurate. That's $200 a month more than we had planned to pay. By then, it was too late to back out. We were closing on the sale a few days later.

Ugh, don't get me started on dealing with that real estate company. That was a nightmare experience on so many levels.

Let the buyer beware! It pays to do your own research. To a large degree, people can be their own realtor these days. So many things are available online with the touch of a button anymore that it makes it easy for the buyer to check all the information out themselves prior to making an offer. Don't forget to check the comps on the surrounding properties before you sign a contract to purchase either. It's wise to make sure the neighborhood is worth what you're going to offer on the home. The comps should support the purchase price and if it doesn't, I'd pass on making an offer on the property because the seller would be clearly overpriced.

[Samantha S]

Originally Posted by RjRobb2

If you had not closed, it was not too late to back out. You can back out all the way up to closing if you choose too.

But without proper cause (and "I didn't know what the taxes were" doesn't count) you would lose your earnest money for sure and possibly even get sued. The time to do your research and change your mind is before the contract is signed.

[TinaMcG]

Originally Posted by Versatile

Now Tina; don't let it get to you. In the future any newbies can go to the court house in person and check them out theirselves. irrc

It's pretty hard to do that when you are still living 600 miles away and aren't familiar with the area you're moving to and the information services it provides. Real estate agents are supposed to provide that sort of information, especially when their client repeatedly asks for it. Waiting one month for an answer to what turned out to be a simple question is not my idea of good service.

[Samantha S]

Originally Posted by TinaMcG

It's pretty hard to do that when you are still living 600 miles away and aren't familiar with the area you're moving to and the information services it provides. Real estate agents are supposed to provide that sort of information, especially when their client repeatedly asks for it. Waiting one month for an answer to what turned out to be a simple question is not my idea of good service.

I agree with you about that!

[TinaMcG]

Originally Posted by Samantha S

But without proper cause (and "I didn't know what the taxes were" doesn't count) you would lose your earnest money for sure and possibly even get sued. The time to do your research and change your mind is before the contract is signed.

Believe me, we did the research. We had no reason at all the question the property tax figure until we saw a much higher figure on a document from the title company. That was when we threatened to stop the deal and began hounding our RE agent to clarify things. We believe we could have gotten out of the deal, but even if we couldn't, losing the earnest money would have been a lot cheaper for us.

And speaking of research, I found the home's address on a foreclosure website before we signed the contract and immediately called our agent to find out if the home was really in foreclosure. She assured me it wasn't, but I insisted she double check. I kept bugging her about it and she finally called back to tell me it HAD been in foreclosure a year before but the owners were able to stop it. She insisted the home was not in foreclosure when we were buying it.

Surprise, surprise. We discovered purely by accident four mnonths after moving in that the home HAD been in foreclosure the whole time we were in the process of buying it. The sellers' bankruptcy attorney didn't even get permission from the courts to sell this property until TWO days before we closed. Oh, and he was also obligated to let us know the sellers were in bankruptcy, which he did not do. We hired a bankruptcy attorney to take them to bankruptcy court to get permission for us to sue them, and we won that battle. Our attorney said he had never seen such a sloppy job or lawyering.

Why did this matter to us? We did not want to purchase from sellers who were bankrupt and were in foreclosure because if they had no money to pay the mortgage, they had no money to do needed repairs and maintenance. People thought we were nuts to think that way, but as it turned out, we were right. The bankrupt sellers hid a serious chimney leak that had been a problem since they built the house. All the neighbors knew it. The plumbing contractor knew all about it and gave us the details. The home inspector didn't see it, but we had rainwater in our bedroom for 7 months until we were finally able to diagnose and fix the problem -- to the tune of almost $10K in chimney, roof and drywall repairs.

We never did sue these people because even if we won, they had no money to pay damages.

[TinaMcG]

By the way, the Welcome to jococourts.com - Search Results for "jococourts.com" website was a huge help to us. That is where I discovered our home went into foreclosure a month before we viewed it the first time. It is also a pretty decent site for checking out people you will have working around your home. If they have been sued repeatedly, it will show up on the courts website and you can dodge that bullet.

[TinaMcG]

Oops, make that Johnson County Kansas District Court Document Search

[Samantha S]

Originally Posted by TinaMcG

We never did sue these people because even if we won, they had no money to pay damages.

What a nightmare! Did you consider suing your real estate agent or agency? (Yeah, I know you sign something saying you can't sue them, but you can) A settlement might help pay for some of the repairs.

Unfortunately, there are agents out there who just want the commission and they don't care what happens to their clients.