January 31, 2020. By J.D. Wolfsberg:
With it’s large number of universities, historic beauty, and booming industry, the city of Boston has a built in growth engine for population. According to the Greater Boston Association of Realtors and as seen in their chart below, over 6,000 residential units were sold in the city in 2019 alone. This includes a combination of condominium (shown in blue), multi-family (shown in green), and single family style homes (shown in red):
If you own a home in the city of Boston, don’t forget to see if you qualify for a residential tax exemption on your property taxes. The exemption excludes a portion of your home’s assessed value for tax purposes. According to the city, the residential exemption will save tax-payers up to $2,879.79 on their property tax bill this year. More information can be found with the following link:
How to File for Residential Tax Exemption
As new Boston homeowners, my wife and I have recently gone through this process. The steps in my own personal experience are as follows:
- Confirm Eligibility: Go to the following link https://www.cityofboston.gov/assessing/search/ and search for your home to confirm that the residential exemption is not listed on your ‘parcel’. It should be listed in the section at the top.
- Complete Form: Fill out the residential exemption form either by mail, online, or at City Hall. My wife and I filled out ours at City Hall when we applied for our marriage certificate; to our surprise it took less than five minutes.
- Confirm Exemption: After it is processed, which does take a few months, return to the previously referenced search link and confirm that the status has changed to ‘Yes’ next to ‘Residential Exemption’ in the top section.
- Contact Mortgage Company: Call your mortgage company and have them rerun an escrow analysis based off the new information.
The application for the current fiscal year is April 1st, 2020. If you’ve recently purchased a home in the Boston area, I hope you can take advantage of these savings!