Walk It Through: The First House
The seller's form, the homeowner's exemption, the assessment notice, and the neighbor's garden.
After the seller accepts the offer, the property condition form arrives and mentions a roof leak.
Two things a person in this spot might do. Picking one shows what the law says about it.
One purchase. Title insurance, inspections, the mortgage itself, the circuit breaker for older owners and the board's later appeals are not worked through here.
A practice walkthrough, not a prediction of how any real one will go. Legal information, not legal advice.
Words this turns on
Terms with a legal meaning that is narrower than the everyday one. Each links to the definition and the authority behind it.
- Board of equalizationThe county board that hears a taxpayer's written appeal of an assessment or exemption decision, filed by the fourth Monday of June for the property roll.
- Homeowner's exemptionThe exemption from property tax of the first $125,000 of a homestead's market value, or 50% of it, whichever is less, for a home that is owner occupied and the owner's primary dwelling.
- HomesteadA home occupied as the owner's principal residence, protected automatically against creditors up to $175,000.
- MinorA person under eighteen years of age. A minor who has been married may enter contracts and sue on them.
- Property tax reductionA reduction on the homestead's property tax for an owner in a listed group, such as sixty-five or older or disabled, with household income under the limit, claimed between January 1 and April 15, of up to $1,500 or the actual tax.
- Property condition disclosureThe form a seller of a home with one to four units completes and delivers to the buyer within ten days of accepting the offer.
- Adverse possessionClaiming land by possession without a deed, which takes a substantial enclosure or cultivation, twenty years of continuous occupation and claim, and payment of all the taxes on the land.