Monday, September 29, 2008

How Maryland's real estate taxes compare nationally

The Tax Foundation is out with its list of the most expensive counties for residential property levies. Amounts are for 2007.

The highest as usual are the New York City suburbs, clocking in at a median annual tax of $7,000 or $8,000 per house. (Median means half the homes were taxed above those amounts and half below.) New York’s Westchester County tops the list at $8,422. New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Illinois all have counties near the top of the rankings.

The U.S. county with the least expensive median real estate tax is Apache County, Arizona, at $133.

The most expensive Maryland county is Howard, with a median tax of $3,775. The least expensive in Maryland is Allegany County at $990.

Measuring property taxes in absolute dollars, however, only tells part of the story.
Taxes in Niagara County, N.Y., are only $2,802 per house. But as a percentage of home value they’re the highest in the nation at close to 3 percent.

Baltimore City has Maryland’s highest property tax as a portion of home value – 1.1 percent. Allegany County’s is nearly as high at 0.9 percent. Howard, Prince George’s, Baltimore and Frederick counties are all 0.8 percent. Everybody else is lower.

Ranked against other states, Maryland property taxes are 13th highest in the country in dollar terms, at $2,436 for the median house. But the state ranked 31st highest for property taxes as a percentage of home value and 22nd for property taxes as a percentage of homeowner income.

UPDATE: Commenters correctly point out that the Tax Foundation's tax rates as a percentage of home value for Maryland localities don't correspond to statutory rates. Baltimore City is way off -- 1.1 percent according to the foundation vs. a 2.3 percent real property tax rate on the books. I can't explain the discrepancy -- assessed value vs. market value? The foundation table's footnotes say all data are from the U.S. Census American Community Survey, using the median real estate tax paid on owner-occupied dwellings and the median value for those homes. (By Jay Hancock, Baltimore Sun)

Monday, September 8, 2008

Capitol Heights a hot spot in Maryland for foreclosure activity

Town ranks among the top county communities dealing with housing crisis

Capitol Heights is a reflection of the severity of the county's housing crisis, ranking among the top communities in the state facing a large number of foreclosures.

According to a state Department of Housing and Community Development report released in August, "Property Foreclosures in Maryland Second Quarter 2008" Capitol Heights is deemed a foreclosure "hot spot," an area that had more than 49 foreclosures in July. Based on individual ZIP codes, Capitol Heights had the highest number of foreclosures with 222. Following behind were Upper Marlboro with 219 and Fort Washington with 201.

Prince George's County accounted for about one-third of state foreclosure activity, at 32 percent, with Montgomery County at 14.7 percent and Baltimore City at 11.1 percent.

Mary Dade, a housing counseling program manager for Capitol Heights-based nonprofit United Communities Against Poverty, said 70 to 80 percent of clients in Capitol Heights seeking help were not victims of adjustable rate mortgages whose interest rates skyrocketed but had "regular old mortgages."

Dade said these were residents who refinanced their homes but continued to rack up debt. UCAP holds monthly foreclosure counseling workshops to educate residents.

Dade said she can understand why other areas such as Fort Washington and Upper Marlboro with $100,000 incomes were hard hit.

"They bought more house than they could afford," Dade said. "They bought $500,000 to $600,000 homes when their income really can't support more than [$350,000] at the max."

Residents are further impacted by a weak economy and higher cost of living, Dade said.

"Food's higher," Dade said. "Gas is off the charts. Energy. People are just having a hard time trying to live and that fixed income does not go as far as it used to. We've got a lot of societal issues and economic issues impacting on this mortgage crisis."

Lloyd Baskin, manager of the Department of Housing and Community Development's Homeownership Center, said the Capitol Heights area was likely hit hard because lenders targeted black senior homeowners whose home values increased by double-digit percentages in the 1990s and that homeowners, using a home equity line of credit and second mortgages, "cashed out" the equity on their homes.

Baskin said they could not predict how many more foreclosures the area could face.

"Suddenly one life-changing incident, like a family member losing their job or divorce, can cause folks to lose their homes," Baskin said.

Baskin said the county plans to partner with groups such as Coalition For Homeownership Preservation in Prince George's County and Prince George's Community College to hone in on problem areas such as Capitol Heights, Fort Washington and Bowie to give homeowners financial literacy training.

Baskin said programs such as the Prince George's County Mortgage Refinance Program and "Bridge to HOPE," where residents can borrow up to $15,000 to repay after a house is sold or refinanced, are available for families to get back on their feet.

Town of Capitol Heights Town Administrator James Booth said the incorporated town does not have a program in place to help residents in danger of losing their homes.

The following ZIP codes have the highest number of foreclosures in the state:

Capitol Heights (20743) – 222
Upper Marlboro (20774) - 219
Fort Washington (20744) - 201
Upper Marlboro (20772) - 167
Clinton (20735) - 152 (by Natalie McGill, www.gazette.net)

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Tax lien sales in Baltimore

Like a lot of Baltimoreans, Al-Amin As´Salaam learned about tax sales the hard way. A 63-year-old retired post office supervisor and disabled veteran, As´Salaam lives on Oak Hill Avenue in East Baltimore. His rowhouse, assessed at about $20,000, has windows taped over with newspaper clippings about his life as an organizer in the civil rights movement. Now white-haired, overweight, and supported by a walking stick, he takes medication for clinical depression. He also suffers from chronic pain, which requires medication. He lives alone, in the company of one cat. He spends much of his time—the one thing he has plenty of—rifling through legal briefs and affidavits, entangled in the murky business of tax sales.

In Maryland, as in all other states, tax sales are a final recourse for collecting unpaid taxes. When Baltimore residents fall behind on their tax payments, after several notifications, the city sells the debt, or lien, in an annual tax sale in May. Investors bid on the liens, offering a premium to the city for the rights to ownership. Once they buy the lien, it’s up to them to persuade residents to pony up. The added incentive? If the homeowner doesn’t pay the bill within six months, investors can move to foreclose on the property; once the foreclosure is granted, the home is theirs.

For the investors and the city, it’s a win-win proposition. Even if the investors don’t end up with the house, they receive 18 percent interest on the lien, and, in the event of foreclosure, they bill their legal fees to the homeowner. Baltimore City collects the unpaid taxes. In 2007, it recouped about $22 million through tax sales, amounting to about 5 percent of the city’s total property tax revenue of $500 million.

For small homeowners like As´Salaam who have fallen behind on payments, however, the process can turn into a labyrinthine nightmare—one that transforms a small debt into a huge one.

As´Salaam’s story begins on January 7, 2008, when his sister found a foreclosure notice from the law firm of Heidi Kenny shoved in the storm-door handle. As´Salaam had fallen behind in his property tax. But if he thought the city had let it go, he was wrong.

Unbeknownst to As´Salaam, his lien had been sold the previous May 12 at a tax sale to Steve Berman of City TSC Holdings, located at 11426 York Road in Cockeysville. In November, that lien was transferred by Berman to another holding company, Property Homes LLC, also located at 11426 York Road. Six months later, a complaint to foreclose on As´Salaam’s house was filed on behalf of Property Homes by lawyer Heidi Kenny, whose offices are also located at 11426 York Road. Now As´Salaam had to figure out how to pay the money he needed to pay to prevent foreclosure.

In April, with assistance from housing rights advocates at the nonprofit ACORN Housing, he filed a petition to redeem, which required Kenny’s firm to submit an affidavit documenting the $2,200 in legal fees and expenses. The affidavit includes a list of the work involved in the $1,500 legal fee. The first item is for “initial client contact.” The client was, in this case, Property Homes LLC, listed at the address of Kenny’s law firm. The next: “Attorney opened file in data system, ordered title report, and sent engagement documents.” The next: “Paralegal tracked redemption of property by periodically checking with Baltimore City to verify tax lien still open.” About two pages of documented work follow.

Because of those legal fees and expenses, As´Salaam’s total debt had ballooned from $672.26 to more than $3,000. “I felt I’d been ambushed,” he says, thumbing through a massive pile of panicked e-mails that he had sent Kenny’s firm. “They’d set me up for this.”

As´Salaam may not have known it, but he was dealing with some of the bigger players in Baltimore tax sales. Real estate investor Steve Berman, whose LLCs purchased 41 percent of the city’s available liens at the May 2007 online auction, is the husband of lawyer Heidi Kenny, who initiated the foreclosure process on November 26.

The couple has been active in tax sales both in and around Baltimore for more than a decade. Since 2002, according to her affidavit for attorney’s fees, Kenny has filed “over four thousand tax sale foreclosure cases throughout the State of Maryland and over two hundred tax sale foreclosure cases in the District of Columbia.” Her husband admitted in federal court to rigging bids in Baltimore County tax sale auctions and agreed to pay a $750,000 fine in return for cooperation with federal prosecutors. Berman sat out the 2008 tax sale, but Kenny purchased 43 percent of Baltimore City’s available liens, at a cost of $16 million.

The couple is used to controversy, having been cited often in the Baltimore Sun’s coverage of the city’s ground rent scandal in 2006. In that series, several investors were accused of taking advantage of an obscure Baltimore tax to initiate foreclosures against Baltimore homeowners. In a meeting at the Venable law firm in Towson, Kenny agrees to give her side of the story—on background and in the presence of a Venable lawyer.

Kenny says that As´Salaam’s problems were brought on by himself, and that, after the motion to foreclose had been filed, As´Salaam had been notified four times of his obligations. She showed me three copies of e-mails sent by her office to As´Salaam. (All had been sent after the foreclosure had been initiated.) Kenny also notes that As´Salaam has been in debt before and that his house was up for tax sale in 2003. (As´Salaam says that repayment of his debt to Capital One, which he attributes to medical bills, is pending, and his earlier debt to the city in 2003 was easily settled because it still belonged to the city.) Kenny also says that As´Salaam owns another property across the street, which he could use as equity to pay his debts. (As´Salaam says it’s his mother’s house, transferred to his ownership in 1986, and now vacant.)

Frank Conaway, currently clerk of the Circuit Court for Baltimore City and the man on the receiving end of all the motions to foreclose in Baltimore City, says that this is a familiar, sad story for many lower-income Baltimoreans. Six months after the tax sales, in late November, when purchasers of tax sales are entitled to initiate foreclosure, huge bundles of foreclosure motions are brought into the Mitchell Courthouse. As´Salaam’s was one of those. Low-income homeowners who have fallen behind in their tax bills get charged with legal bills for foreclosure and suddenly are overwhelmed by debt. “So many people call me a day or two before they’re going to get foreclosed,” Conaway says. “It brings tears to your eyes. And I ask them, ‘Why didn’t you call me a couple of months ago?’ They’re supposed to get notified. Somehow they don’t.”

Many, he says, are elderly, sick, and saddled with debt. “It’s ridiculous to see their property being taken for a debt of five or six hundred dollars. Something’s not right about that.” Conaway says he’s filed complaints against Kenny with the state’s legal oversight panel in Annapolis, but they’ve been dismissed. “That’s what makes it messy,” he says. “It may be immoral, but it’s not illegal. It’s the way they do business.”

But Kenny argues that the reputation is unwarranted: By paying the debts on property taxes, she’s actually doing the city a favor and doing it according to state law. In effect, the city is handing off the job of debt collection to lawyers such as herself, who then take the blame for doing something the city doesn’t have the resources to do for itself. Kenny worries that she is being vilified for paying As´Salaam’s property tax and then attempting to collect his lien using the only enforcement method available to her.

At the very least, the As´Salaam case illustrates how tax sales can entangle homeowners and creditors in a costly battle. For As´Salaam, a $672 debt has become an ongoing dispute that grows more complex—and expensive—the more he protests. And many city and state officials are decidedly uncomfortable with the perception that low-income property owners have become a lucrative income base for lawyers who charge foreclosure fees.

But the story may have a happy ending. In the last year, competing interests in the tax sale system have been working to rein in its abuses. Steps have been taken to assure that foreclosure remains an option of last resort, not a way of strangling unwitting homeowners with high legal fees.

Over several months last winter, a task force composed of housing advocates, tax sale investors, and representatives from state and local government set out to reform the tax sale process statewide. “It’s one of the most mundane subjects you could ever get involved in,” acknowledges State Sen. George Della, who’s become an advocate for reform. “But it’s important.”

Compromise didn’t come easy, and Della paints a picture of long, somewhat contentious sessions. In the end, he says, while no side got exactly what it wanted, a series of recommendations was hammered out. The general assembly passed a bill, SB 854, containing many of those recommendations, and Gov. O’Malley signed the bill into law on April 24. The bill, sponsored by State Sen. Verna Jones and cosponsored by Della, requires that outstanding taxes be at least $250 before they can be sold as liens. It effectively caps attorney’s fees at $1,300. And it mandates that those who purchase liens notify property owners within sixty days of the tax sale, so that they will have the opportunity to pay their debt without incurring the additional legal fees. Under that law, As´Salaam might have avoided his current mess.

Ned Carey, a Baltimore tax sale investor and a blogger for Realestateinvesting.com, says he agrees that the process needed reform. He acknowledges that some big players were clearly using the process to charge customers huge foreclosure fees, entangling homeowners in a process that made it even more difficult to pay back their debts.

If the reforms can reduce these predatory practices, Carey says tax sales really can be win-win-wins: Carey says he spends about $100,000 each year purchasing liens at tax sales—usually on abandoned property. (He describes himself as a “second tier” investor, compared with Kenny.) When the liens go unpaid, he takes possession of the house and either fixes it up or sells it to someone who intends to rehab—hopefully, but not always, at a profit. The city collects unpaid debt, and abandoned homes land back on the market.

Carey also has a few words of advice to anyone who finds that the lien on his or her house has been sold. “Don’t panic. But then don’t take it too easy, either. You’ve got six months. Pay the lien, and you’ll avoid the problem. As for me being the bad guy, the city would be doing the same thing … only they’d be doing it a lot faster.” (by John Barry www.urbanitebaltimore.com)