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How to Lower Your Property Tax, Thach Nguyen on Creative RE, ADUs
• 41 minKeith explains how to increase real estate cash flow by appealing and reducing property taxes. Then welcomes high‑energy real estate investor and educator Thach Nguyen. Thach shares his refugee‑to‑multimillionaire story, breaks down his roadmap to retiring with rentals, and explains how ADUs (Accessory Dwelling Units) are transforming both investor returns and affordable housing—especially in Seattle. Resources: Follow @ThachNguyen on Instagram and all major social platforms. Episode Page: GetRichEducation.com/602 For access to properties or free help with a GRE Investment Coach, start here: GREmarketplace.com GRE Free Investment Coaching: GREinvestmentcoach.com Get mortgage loans for investment property: RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com Invest with Freedom Family Investments. For predictable 10-12% quarterly returns, visit FreedomFamilyInvestments.com/GRE or text FAMILY to 66866 Unlock truly passive real estate income—visit flockhomes.com/GRE today to see if your properties qualify for a 721 exchange with Flock Homes. Will you please leave a review for the show? I'd be grateful. Search "how to leave an Apple Podcasts review" For advertising inquiries, visit: GetRichEducation.com/ad Best Financial Education: GetRichEducation.com Get our wealth-building newsletter free— GREletter.com Our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/GetRichEducation Follow us on Instagram: @getricheducation Complete episode transcript: Keith Weinhold 0:01 Welcome to GRE. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, talking about how to increase your cash flow by obtaining a successful appeal and reduction in your property taxes. Then real estate personality Thatch Nguyen and I discuss mindset and some creative real estate techniques today on get rich education, Keith Weinhold 0:23 the same place where I get my own mortgage loans is where you can get yours. Ridge lending group and MLS, 42056, they provided our listeners with more loans than anyone because they specialize in income properties. They help you build a long term plan for growing your real estate empire with leverage. Start your prequel and even chat with President chailey Ridge personally while it's on your mind, start at Ridge lending group.com that's Ridge lending group.com Speaker 1 0:57 You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is get rich education. Keith Weinhold 1:13 Welcome to GRE from Mount Holly New Jersey to Hollywood, California and across 188 nations worldwide. I'm Keith Weinhold. This is get rich education, and I'm still not wearing Dockers, and I am in Hollywood, California today. More on that later. Among all the major investment classes when it's bought right real estate is the second safest investment class to bonds. Bonds are the safest among them all. Real estate has the highest returns, so it's the second safest and has the highest returns. And that's why it's our focus on this show. But if you want to be in real estate for two years or less, well, then it's likely best to invest elsewhere, at least with long term rentals, because you need time to defray your transaction cost. And for real estate pays five ways to start compounding. Coming up shortly, it's pretty popular real estate personality Thatch Nguyen. He will be here, and I did not know Thatch until recently, when we were introduced by our mutual friend Scott Saunders. And Scott, who I had on the show here a few years ago, is one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet in real estate. Well, besides those high return, low risk real estate attributes. Of course, when you own property directly, you also get a big measure of control if you want it. Now, control comes really with that option A lot of times to get involved and make your real estate investing less passive, just an option, because successful real estate can be as simple as buy and hold, but today we're discussing strategies. If you want to get a little hands on, if you so choose, you can attempt a successful appeal of the amount of property tax that you're paying. And of course, every dollar that you lower your property tax is $1 where you increase your income. And this feels like a germane conversation, since tax day in the USA was just last week. Ah, yes, property tax, hmm, it's like a version of the government charges you rent on your own property in perpetuity. That's what it is. And before I get into how to potentially get your property tax lowered, property taxes are under pressure. Some states are still making their serious push to completely eliminate the property tax, namely in Florida, Texas and Indiana. Those are three of the front running states, probably the big three. And I won't get into all of that again, because I devoted an episode segment to that topic a few months back. Others are considering elimination too, Georgia, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, but it's just more talk than anything in those six states. Now, if a state undertook property tax abolition, it would probably only apply to owner occupied property, homeowners or voters, and those property values would soar. But these new comparables, what they could do, in turn, is lift the value of your out of state rental property as well, because you could always sell your investment property to an owner occupant. But in my opinion, no state is going to eliminate the property tax. I mean, sheesh, it's kind of like trying to eliminate gravity. It's just too hard to replace the revenue from elsewhere. Schools, police and fire and infrastructure heavily rely on property tax, so instead, what's realistic is a tax cap, a ceiling on the amount of property tax that you pay, and with an income producing property of course, your tenant essentially pays the property tax for you now, even before buying a property or for one that you already own, the most accurate way you can check the tax amount for your exact address is on the county assessor's website. Keith Weinhold 5:38 The next best places are listing websites like Zillow and Redfin. This is all public information. The way to find a county assessor's website for your property is with a simple four word search. What you should google is the county name, and then the words assessor property search, those are the only four words that you need. And then what if you discover that you're paying more than you are for nearby, similar properties? Oh, well, there we go. That's a sign that you're over paying. You can usually file an appeal form at the same website. And before we talk about how to do it, realize that only about 5% of property owners ever file an appeal, and in a bit, I'll tell you what your percent chance for success is at lowering your property tax, your chances of it being lowered. So if you believe that you have a case for lower property taxes, first, it helps to know what you're arguing. And this is important, it's something that can trip you up. You're actually not arguing that taxes are too high. You're arguing my property is overvalued compared to the market. That's it. That's your basis of contention. Yeah, if you walk in talking about things like fairness or inflation or government spending, then you've already lost the county assessor's office isn't the place for your best rant on how fiat currency is garbage or something like that. Now you might not even have to physically walk in anywhere today. Sometimes you can get your appeal rewarded informally. Other times you go before what's called a Board of Equalization in most places and in person, hearings have become less common. Video calls have become quite a bit more common since the pandemic, but you want to review your property details with them. You want to be sure to point out if there's incorrect square footage or the wrong lot size, or missing depreciation, or condition issues or upgrades that are overstated and even small errors can swing your value by 10s of 1000s of dollars and then, and it's whether this is with rental property or with your own home build your comparables Like an investor, not a homeowner, because this is really where you win or lose. You need three to five strong comparable sales in the same neighborhood, or really close ones that sold recently, ideally within the last six months, and they should be of a similar size and age and condition. And then make adjustments. Inferior comps support a lower value. And we don't just want to cherry pick garbage comps. We want to keep it credible, and then for your best chance of getting your property tax lowered, find your angle, and really this is your leverage point. Most winning appeals hinge on one clear argument, either a condition gap, meaning that your property is worse than the comps are, or it's an argument like market timing, and this is if values have softened since the assessment date, or the income approach for rentals. Therefore it's the value based on noi, not emotion. You could take that track or other external issues like noise or location drawbacks or obsolescence, so only pick one of those four primary arguments here, condition, gap, market timing, the income approach or external issues and document everything. This is really where you separate yourself. You want to show photos and have them dated and be clear and honest. Nothing dramatic there repair estimates or contractor bids, inspection reports, rent rolls or income statements. So you're not telling a story. You're presenting evidence this way, and be sure to package it cleanly. This matters more than you think. Assessors see sloppy appeals all day. So you're going to stand out by being organized and concise, like a one to two page summary and some exhibits, and keeping it professional meaning, no emotional language, so you're making it clean and easy for them to agree with you
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