An interesting point came up when D hosted a couple of his team members who were up visiting from South Carolina and Florida.
First off, they were disgusted with our weather. The last time they came up, it was 8 C and that was enough to cause complaints. This time, they didn't have words as they were so cold.
At lunch, D's friend's (from Michigan) housing struggles came up during a conversation about housing and school districts. The one lady from South Carolina who moved about 4 years ago piped up and said she didn't think 9K was a lot in property tax. She paid much more...to the tune of 22K a year for a 160K house!!
The other fellow, from Florida was a young guy who is considering buying his first house. So far he hadn't come across such numbers yet in his search. He was shocked at the amount as well.
In Canada, we pay taxes according to how much the house and land are valued. It has nothing to do with school districts. So you would never find a house worth 160K with a 22K property tax price tag. You would have to own a house in the millions or be waterfront in a popular cottage area (same difference) to have those kind of taxes.
If you don't want to send your kids to the school in your area, you can choose to apply to another school but it would be your responsibility to get them there. It happened to me during my last year of high school. My parents moved so I applied for "flexible boundary" and took public transit to get there. Had I decided to go to the art school instead of a regular highschool, it would have been an even bigger commute. Thank goodness we have options like that here.
***Speaking of housing costs, I just got our bank's annual mortgage summary. In 2012, D paid $23304 in principal and $1599 in interest. No complaints there.***
Showing posts with label property valuation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label property valuation. Show all posts
Friday, February 1, 2013
Monday, December 10, 2012
The Trap Is Set 2
Maybe my novice violin playing and our noise making (same difference depending on the day...) helped? We did not hear any sounds from below the last couple of nights. D hung a LED flashlight in the crawlspace as that is supposed to make things uncomfortable too. The trap door sprung the first night but nothing. The sardines around the trap were eaten. D reset it and no action the second night.
We have done all we can do for now. Our wildlife guy will take it from here as we won't be able to head back up until the new year. And over the winter, everything depends on the weather.
The plan is he is going to install a one way spring loaded door today if our guest has not been trapped yet. Then he will be digging along the foundation to lay some kind of impermeable cloth so nothing can dig through again. Once he is sure the raccoon has left (has to go out sooner or later), then the door will be removed and area sealed. Other than having take up part of deck to do the work, he doesn't feel it will be too big an issue.
It has been a busy last 3 days. Because I am the way I am, I also had fireplace contractors, township personnel, natural gas contractor and our realtor come by too. We're not selling yet but wanted an idea of market value as we will be appealing our property value assessment for both the house and cottage this year. More on this process another time.
Our gas got turned off as part of the cottage closing without our permission. They have never done that before so luckily we had another source of heat or else we would have been even more mad and cold. So we obviously had a new person assigned to our place. We are grateful this new person brought to our attention the animal thing even though it ended up being a coincidence that the real problem is in the other half of the cottage (The crawlspaces aren't connected).
The fireplace guys were redoing the caulking around the chimney as we found a couple of drip marks on the floor. Their work was tested shortly after as we got a good dose of rain/freezing rain. No issues.
And finally the township fellow was over to discuss ideas about managing random pieces of furniture we've found by our garbage box twice this year. Because we and our 2 neighbours are at the end of a quiet street with 14 acres of wood behind and to the side, it is a good place for people to dump their stuff instead of bring it to the dump and paying the $6. Or waiting until the once a year large item pickup where 5 items are picked up for free which is what we've done with our finds. Turns out our neighbours have had that happen too and I guess it is our turn.
Here's the kicker. Should the township pick it up while on their patrol, whoever's garbage box it is beside gets charged -- 1st time warning, 2nd time $125, subsequent times $350...You can probably guess my reaction to that news.
So we are going to start a neighbourhood garbage watch amongst the 3 of us and cover for each other to help avoid those fees. I just can't believe people would do this in the first place. Talk about not taking responsibility for yourself and your stuff. Plus it is really bad Karma.
The township fellow was really understanding and nice. Apparently it is happening all over the place. He has written it up as a littering violation and offered to remove them (lawn chairs) for us.
We came up with something better. Because we rarely use our garbage box and are used to taking our garbage and recycling home (due to animals) anyways, we decided to store our box away in the garage. So it will no longer be a sitting duck for someone to lean something else against. The township can only send letters to box owners they can identify.
We've left messages with our neighbours telling them what we've done and I know the one will likely follow as he rarely leaves garbage out either. Our other neighbour comes up more often and has someone maintain her property so she will probably continue to use her box.
We have done all we can do for now. Our wildlife guy will take it from here as we won't be able to head back up until the new year. And over the winter, everything depends on the weather.
The plan is he is going to install a one way spring loaded door today if our guest has not been trapped yet. Then he will be digging along the foundation to lay some kind of impermeable cloth so nothing can dig through again. Once he is sure the raccoon has left (has to go out sooner or later), then the door will be removed and area sealed. Other than having take up part of deck to do the work, he doesn't feel it will be too big an issue.
It has been a busy last 3 days. Because I am the way I am, I also had fireplace contractors, township personnel, natural gas contractor and our realtor come by too. We're not selling yet but wanted an idea of market value as we will be appealing our property value assessment for both the house and cottage this year. More on this process another time.
Our gas got turned off as part of the cottage closing without our permission. They have never done that before so luckily we had another source of heat or else we would have been even more mad and cold. So we obviously had a new person assigned to our place. We are grateful this new person brought to our attention the animal thing even though it ended up being a coincidence that the real problem is in the other half of the cottage (The crawlspaces aren't connected).
The fireplace guys were redoing the caulking around the chimney as we found a couple of drip marks on the floor. Their work was tested shortly after as we got a good dose of rain/freezing rain. No issues.
And finally the township fellow was over to discuss ideas about managing random pieces of furniture we've found by our garbage box twice this year. Because we and our 2 neighbours are at the end of a quiet street with 14 acres of wood behind and to the side, it is a good place for people to dump their stuff instead of bring it to the dump and paying the $6. Or waiting until the once a year large item pickup where 5 items are picked up for free which is what we've done with our finds. Turns out our neighbours have had that happen too and I guess it is our turn.
Here's the kicker. Should the township pick it up while on their patrol, whoever's garbage box it is beside gets charged -- 1st time warning, 2nd time $125, subsequent times $350...You can probably guess my reaction to that news.
So we are going to start a neighbourhood garbage watch amongst the 3 of us and cover for each other to help avoid those fees. I just can't believe people would do this in the first place. Talk about not taking responsibility for yourself and your stuff. Plus it is really bad Karma.
The township fellow was really understanding and nice. Apparently it is happening all over the place. He has written it up as a littering violation and offered to remove them (lawn chairs) for us.
We came up with something better. Because we rarely use our garbage box and are used to taking our garbage and recycling home (due to animals) anyways, we decided to store our box away in the garage. So it will no longer be a sitting duck for someone to lean something else against. The township can only send letters to box owners they can identify.
We've left messages with our neighbours telling them what we've done and I know the one will likely follow as he rarely leaves garbage out either. Our other neighbour comes up more often and has someone maintain her property so she will probably continue to use her box.
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