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Home Ownership: Property Taxes

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If you are following the list of items in the home ownership category, you may notice that property taxes were not included in that list. You are right!

Usually property taxes would be housed with the tax documents located in Box 3. However, after using this system for a number of years, I have found that when I need these tax documents, I look in the home ownership file first. If I don’t find it there, then I look in the tax file.

To assist me in using my time wisely, I have chosen to move the property tax documents from the tax file to the home ownership file. Making this change is my personal preference. If you would look in the tax category first, then place these documents there. Find a system that works for you that will allow you to use your time wisely.

Continuing with our filing system under the home ownership category, we have added our deed(s) and homeowner’s (or renter’s) insurance documents. Behind these documents, I have included the following property tax papers:

1. The current property tax notice. This is an annual statement sent from our county.

2. Copy of tax payment. Since this payment is made by our mortgage company from our escrow account, I make a copy of the mortgage statement showing that the taxes were paid. In the event I need to prove that the payment was made, I have the copy of the receipt with the tax notice.

3. Notices of Classification, Appraisal, and Assessment of Real Estate Tax. These documents list our home’s assessed value for tax purposes. Any countywide reassessment changes will be included on this form.

These items are organized with the current year on top and paper clipped together. (I like using paper clips rather than staples. The staples leave marks when I need to replace documents. The paper clips do come off periodically, but overall, they work great.) I then place these tax documents behind the insurance paperwork for easy access when needed.

Next week we will continue adding documents to this category of home ownership. I hope you are taking steps to getting your paperwork organized. It is a process that is worth your time and energy.

Question: Do you prefer using staples or paper clips to keep your documents together?

Home Ownership: Property Survey

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After taking a slight detour from Suze Orman’s Protection Portfolio’s Checklist, I will return without anymore turns in this category. 🙂

The past three weeks, we have concentrated on our home ownership documents which are housed in our filing system. This third category of our Box 1 items currently holds our deed(s), insurance (homeowner’s or renter’s), and property tax documents.

The fourth item housed in this category is a survey of our property. If you have numerous properties, then you might consider making a separate category per address. With multiple properties, you will have these documents for each property. Keeping them organized will be extremely beneficial for you.

Our survey is a one-page document showing a scaled diagram of the property we have purchased. The drawing includes where on the property our house is located, easements, and property lines. This document also includes a small location map, book identification where the survey is recorded, and a raised seal deeming this survey official.

Having setup this filing system before we built and purchased our house, I went into our closing ready to ask for a copy of our survey. Now, the survey may already have been packaged with our closing documents. I am not sure if this is standard practice or not. However, I purposefully asked for a copy and received it before our closing session was complete.

If I had skipped preparing the home ownership category of my filing system, then I would not have known to ask or looked for our survey.

If you cannot locate your survey, you can contact the Register of Deeds Office in the property’s county for instructions. Each county has different regulations, so there is not a standardized request form to obtain your survey.

If you have closed recently on your home, I would check with your mortgage lender or closing attorney (if you had one) to obtain a copy. Usually the mortgage company and attorney’s office will be able to locate your survey quicker than the county’s government office.

In my file, our survey is located behind our property tax documents. It is a small document, but one I will be glad to have should we extend our home or add a shed to our property.

Next week I will share another document in our home ownership category. In the meantime, keep using your time wisely to stay organized.

Question: Was your survey included in your package of paperwork at your closing?

Home Ownership: Title Insurance

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In organizing our important documents, we continue to focus on our home ownership documents. In the accordion-filing system, these documents are housed in the eighth file slot from the front of the box. This slot contains our deed(s), insurance (homeowner’s or renter’s), property tax documents, and survey(s).

The next item following our survey is our title insurance policy. Having researched home ownership before building and purchasing our house, we saw our need for title insurance. Our state does not require title insurance, but we opted to purchase it anyway.

Our reasoning: Title insurance will protect us in the event someone lays claim to our property. If that should occur, we would incur legal fees. Our title insurance would reimburse us for those fees up to the amount of our coverage.

Besides this situation, there are a few other scenarios where title insurance helps to protect the current owners to the said property. Since we invested our money, energy, and time into our home, we opted for this extra protection.

Having paid for title insurance, we received a policy which is kept safe. The policy is housed in this file behind our survey. Hopefully, we will never need this document, but if we do, we know where to find it. 🙂

Next week, I will share the last item housed in this eighth file slot with our home ownership documents. Keep up the good work. You are making progress one item at a time.

Question: Did you choose to purchase title insurance? Why or why not?

Home Ownership: Appraisal

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The time has come to complete another file slot in our important documents filing system. Are you doing a happy dance? Come on . . . getting organized is exciting stuff.

I love to be organized. When I cannot find something, I get in panic mode, and I really don’t like it. I must find the searched-for item until it is found. Thankfully, I don’t lose too many items, but staying organized helps me to use my time wisely.

In this series on home ownership (the third category of our filing system), we have placed in this eighth file opening our deed(s), insurance (homeowner’s or renter’s), property tax documents, property survey(s), and title insurance. The next and final item is our appraisal.

Now getting a copy of our appraisal was more difficult than I thought it would be. For some reason, our mortgage lender did not want to supply us with a copy. At the closing, we stopped signing the paperwork until the appraisal was given to us.

I still do not understand why the lender did not want us to have a copy of our appraisal. The payment for the appraisal was included in our closing costs, so we were paying for an appraisal that the lender did not want us to see. Since we paid for it, we were not about to leave the room without getting a copy of that report.

Having prepared this filing system with a section for our home ownership documents prior to purchasing our home helped me know exactly what items to request and obtain at our closing.

Since this request was granted with some tension, I am assuming that the appraisal is not usually included with the closing documents. However, I left our closing with a copy of all the documents I requested.

If you don’t have a copy of your appraisal, you can either pay to have an appraisal done or just wait until you need one. Our appraisal (7 years ago) was $250 from our mortgage company’s in-house appraiser. Personally, I would not pay for an appraisal without needing it. Just know that when you get an appraisal, your copy goes in this file opening.

There you have it! These are all the documents housed in my eighth slot of my filing system under home ownership documents. Next week, I will continue with the home ownership documents housed in the ninth file slot. Keep up the great work, and happy organizing!

Question: I’m curious, did you receive a copy of your appraisal at closing?

Home Ownership: Personal Articles Insurance Policy

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We are making progress getting those important documents gathered, organized, and filed! Thus far, we have created a home for our credit report/credit card documents, personal documents, and now our home ownership documents.

Having filled 8 file slots, we are ready to address the ninth file opening from the front of the accordion file. My ninth file slot houses two additional sets of home ownership documents. The first set of paperwork is our personal articles insurance policy documents.

Description

If you are unfamiliar with this type of insurance and you have some valuable possessions, then consider this inexpensive type of policy. Per State Farm’s web site:

You may have more valuable possessions than you realize. Your Homeowners Policy [or Renter’s Insurance Policy] can provide some coverage, but with deductibles and limitations. A Personal Articles Policy can provide the additional coverage that you may need.

Some items the Personal Articles Policy may cover are:

  • Jewelry
  • Furs
  • Cameras
  • Musical Instruments
  • Silverware/Goldware
  • Golf Equipment
  • Fine Art (such as oriental rugs and paintings)
  • Collectibles
  • Sports Equipment
  • Computer Equipment

Coverage

Our personal articles policy was written back in 2004. We began our coverage by insuring my wedding and engagement ring set. Later, we added our cellular phones and our point-and-shoot camera. Then in 2008, State Farm cancelled all cellular phone coverage since too many individuals were losing their phones and upgrading to another model. We lost our coverage on our cellular phones, but then we purchased a video camera which we added to our policy.

Having the added insurance on these items assures a replacement if the item is lost or repairing charges if the item is damaged. Though we have not lost of any of the items, we did need to replace our first point-and-shoot camera. We took a trip by air. When we arrived at our destination, our camera case was cracked resulting in very dark pictures. When we returned home, we contacted our agent for instructions. We then did the following:

    1. Purchased a comparable model to our current broken camera. We ended up getting a better camera for less than we purchased the original because our exact model was no longer available for purchase.
    2. Took the old camera and new camera with receipt to our State Farm agent.
    3. Traded our old camera for a check in the amount of the new camera price, verified with the receipt.
    4. Removed the old camera from our personal articles policy and added the new camera.

The process was very easy, inexpensive, and worth our time and energy!

Cost

Your annual premium will depend on your insurance company’s rates and the value of the items you add to this policy. Our policy to cover my ring and our 2 cameras is $43 per year. Yeah! It’s only $43, and these items are fully insured. If we had not had this insurance when our camera broke, we would have spent much more than $43 to replace it.

In addition to saving us replacement costs for broken insured items, this policy also gives us an additional policy with State Farm. We receive premium discounts for having multiple insurance policies. For us, this policy pays for itself because our policies on our vehicles and home receive more of a discount than this policy cost.

With a very reasonable insurance policy, you can cover your valuable possessions. I highly recommend a personal articles policy for your peace of mind. Our policy continues to be worth our money, energy, and time!

Filing System

My personal articles paperwork consists of:

    • Original binder document
    • Documents indicating a change, addition, or deletion
    • Current policy
    • Receipt for the current annual premium

All of these documents are paper clipped together and housed in the ninth file slot of my accordion file under the category of home ownership documents.

If you have never heard of a personal articles policy, then I hope you have been informed from the description, coverage, cost, and filing system. Next week, I will share the second and last set of documents in this file slot which will complete the home ownership category. Keep up the document organization as you continue in using time wisely. Happy organizing! 🙂