Property Tax Bill – Do I Have To Pay it?

Property Tax Bill – Do I Have To Pay it?  I Thought My Lender Was Supposed To Pay That!

Denver/Lakewood: You may have gotten your property tax bill in the mail around this time in Colorado and you might be asking yourself, “Wait a minute, I escrow for my property taxes. Why am I getting billed? Isn’t my lender going to pay that? Do I have to pay this? Am I getting double billed?”

I got my property tax bill last week and made me think of this for a blog topic because we get this question a lot this time of year from our clients as a mortgage company. They’re getting billed for their taxes and they’re asking themselves, “Do I have to pay this property tax bill? I thought my lender was going to pay it. I’m getting one 12th of my taxes taken out of my mortgage payment every single month. Shouldn’t they be paying this?” Well, the short answer is yes, of course.

The lender is obligated to pay that tax bill for you… You don’t have to pay that property tax bill.

The county sends it to all homeowners this time of year, both for informational purposes so that you know how much your taxes are, and also for billing purposes, for those people that don’t escrow as part of their mortgage or maybe they don’t have a mortgage on their house. Wouldn’t that be nice, right? If you’re reading this and didn’t have a mortgage.

If the lender’s escrowing for taxes, they’re going to be sending that payment, so watch your mortgage statement to make sure that sent. And if you don’t see it go out by mid to late February at the latest, then you should be contacting your lender to make sure that they are planning to send that, or have sent it, or what’s going on or why it wasn’t sent.

Now in Colorado, in most counties, maybe all counties, but in most counties anyway, the taxes are due for six months of the yearly taxes in February and June. That payment that’s going out from the lender should be for six months worth of taxes based on that tax bill that you received.

I hope that answers your question as far as if you need to pay that property tax bill that you got from the county. The answer, again, is no if your lender is escrowing for taxes. So don’t worry about it, it’s for informational purposes only.

If you have any other questions that are home loan related or anything else I can do for you, just let us know. Call us today for FREE 303-670-0137.