Did you know that if you are over 60 years of age you might qualify for exemptions or deferrals of property taxes in the King County area?  Not everyone knows that this is an option so if you haven’t heard of it before you might want to go to this link at the King County website to learn more.  Even if you don’t live in King County, you can always check your local county – most areas do offer these kinds of programs.

I’ve had clients in the past that have either looked into these programs or been part of them already and it’s a common item for me to look for in a title report if I’m working with an estate sale.  If a person was on the deferral program the taxes do have to get paid off eventually and there is an interest rate added on as well, which I believe is 5% right now.  Typically the trigger for repayment is when the owner moves out and sells the house (you must reside in the home to qualify) or the owner dies and the home is sold that the payoff occurs.

If it’s an exemption, my understanding is that there is no repayment of the difference between the exempt amount and the current assessment.

For buyers who are purchasing property you’ll want to be sure and check the title report that you “should” get in the mail or via your agent.  I can tell you that I’m sadly aware that many agents throw their copy away assuming the title company sent a packet to the client – but clients frequently don’t know what these packages are and they throw them away too and don’t read the policy info and underlying documents regarding the home.  Escrow companies read them because they’re looking for payoff info that they’ll need to close out the transaction.  Title companies are supposed to be reviewing the info in the title report and determining if there are any problems that might impede the sale, but what they think is important and what is important to you, the buyer, may be two different things.  I ended up with the bad end of one of those situations in a past home purchase prior to becoming an agent and I use it as an educational moment for my clients today. 

Believe me, finding out after the fact and when my neighbor was about to tear up my yard for sewer access and I’d spent a lot of money landscaping my yard, it was an eye opener to find out I could possibly become financially responsible for the over $10,000 cost of repair to my neighbor’s sewer line.  Maybe I’ll write a post about that some time so that I can lay out the thoughts and steps involved that would have brought that to light when I purchased the house.  It’s the one failure of an item within a transaction I think I ever saw happen with my old agent.  We worked together 10 years as client/agent and now he is a colleague I think highly of within this industry. 

If you are a seller, and particularly if you’re helping sell a house from an estate sale, pull the preliminary title report so you can see if any charges need to be paid at closing so you don’t get a surprise.  Also, it will let you know if there are any liens on a property or other outstanding issues that could cloud the title and make it difficult or impossible to sell.

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