I plan on writing this post from a homeowners perspective, so I’m going to take of my “Realtor hat” for a few minutes and talk about the Plainfield 2006 property tax assessments. I didn’t learn any of this in training to become a Realtor, I learned it from my parents, Wayne and Kathy Barnes (and the school of hard knocks!)

We got our 2006 Plainfield Township property assessments last month, and I have to say, I was a little taken back. I knew it was coming though, the fact that our home was brand new construction in 2005, made it impossible to evaluate until the following year. Because our house now sits where an empty corn field was 3 years prior, in 2005 it was assessed as just that. We had been paying taxes on un-improved land for 12 months that didn’t catch up with us until 2 years later…

Let me explain a little bit about how the tax bills are figured out here in Will County, and in Illinois for that matter. Property taxes are paid in arrears, which means you pay for the current years assessments… next year. For example, here in Will County, the 2006 taxes are paid in 2 equal installments due on June 1st and then again on September 1st. Assessments in Plainfield are based on approximately 2.1% of the purchase price.

Are you still with me? If your a first time home buyer and you just received your first tax bill, it can be very confusing!

It gets even more confusing if you have an escrow account for your taxes and insurance. The reason being, if you don’t have enough money in your escrow account to pay your property taxes, (which happens a lot, especially on new construction) your mortgage company will pay the difference and you will carry a negative balance in your escrow account.

The mortgage company then conducts an “escrow analysis”, to determine how much money needs to go into the escrow account to “pay back” the shortage, as well as prepare for the next years tax bill. (unfortunately folks… taxes rarely go down)

I would suggest calling your mortgage company to have them perform an escrow analysis when your tax bill arrives so you can be prepared for your new payment in September when the bank will automatically adjust your mortgage payment without warning. This is when many new homeowners get in trouble.

When this happened to us in our first new home our payment increased by nearly $400 per month! $200 per month went to paying the debt to the mortgage company, the other $200 went to cover the increase in the upcoming years taxes.

Here are two mistakes we made.

• When the mortgage company sent back our overage check from the previous years “escrow analysis” based on un-improved land (un-improved land = unnaturally low taxes until fully assessed) we cashed it and spent it. We should have cashed it and sent it back in our next payment as “additional escrow funds”.
• We should have called the mortgage company as soon as we got our tax bill to make sure that our escrow account had sufficient funds for paying out on the taxes… and if it didn’t how much we needed to budget for the increase in our payment after the last installment was paid.

Also, it never hurts to call the Plainfield Township tax assessors office, just to make sure you are getting all of your qualified exemptions, including the homestead exemption. Also, if you have an escrow account with your mortgage company, make sure you don’t double pay your property tax bill. If you receive a tax bill in the mail and you have an escrow account, your mortgage company also receives a copy of the bill and pays it directly from your account.

I hope that you’ve found this information helpful in understanding your Plainfield IL property tax bill, and that it makes paying that last installment a little easier.

Julie Ferenzi | Realtor®
Plainfield IL Homes
630-673-6233