Home Free
I have a nice eight wooded acres in the middle of a pretty ritzy subdivision with a large house on it—and here’s the thing…I pay no property taxes. None. No emergency services district assessment (tax that pays for Fire/EMS), no school district assessment, no city taxes, no taxes of any kind on a property worth quite a bit. I pay no water or sewer. Trash is picked up for free.
So, back a mere 15-20 years ago, the place was a county water treatment facility and a Road and Bridge Department garage and warehouse out in the middle of nowhere. Expanding suburbia soon overtook the capacity of the old antiquated water system and a new modern system was built to meet the needs of the new subdivisions.
The old water plant was shut down and demolished, and a few years later the Road and Bridge Department, expanding to meet the building and maintenance of all the new roads to service all the new growth, moved out to new facilities since the old ones were now way too old and way too small.
It sat there for a while, empty and disused while the nearby town annexed a huge chunk of the county including the area surrounding the old county yard. Eventually, the whole eight acres were surplussed and sold at auction, and I bought it for a pittance.
Over a few years, doing most of the work myself, I turned the old warehouse into a home. The place is huge, all the structure and plumbing is already there, so for a minimal expense I end up with a lot of large rooms in what I turned into a massive modern house for less money than you would ever imagine, plus the old maintenance garage still can hold multiple vehicles, boat, RV, tractor, workshop, whatever.
Time marched on and pretty soon a developer bought the surrounding land and built huge upscale houses all around. Property values are through the roof and I could sell my home and eight acres for a fortune but I never will because I own the place free and clear and don’t have to pay a dime in taxes or utilities (beyond electricity and interwebs).
Why not? Well, it was platted as government property when the various taxing assessment districts were defined, and the county doesn’t pay taxes. The city annexed all around it, but didn’t include any county-owned property in the annexation for some obscure reason, including the eight acres in question.
This whole eight-acre area is a big black hole that doesn’t exist in any taxing authorities jurisdiction, so I just exist without having to pay taxes on it to anyone. The water and sewer just work without me getting a bill, the trash is picked up from the dumpster just like it always was, and nobody ever questions it.
I just kind of surf along in my little kingdom for next to nothing while all the neighbors surrounding me with smaller homes on much smaller lots pay out fortunes in property taxes and HOA dues and have to deal with city ordinances and HOA rules and bylaws.