HB 1277?ÿon April 25th which has passed and will be implemented in July.?ÿ This bill adds an additional one hundred dollars ($100) to most filings including all survey related documents, effectively doubling the fees (except corner records which have always?ÿbeen free). This additional fee is designated to fund eviction prevention, housing stability, and address homelessness ???¦.
As a licensed WA State surveyor I am livid.?ÿ Sure, charge appropriately for processing and archival maintenance costs, but not more.?ÿ My thoughts in no particular order:
- "It's only $100 so the big bad developers/surveyors/banks who are involved in big transactions won't care".?ÿ Yes, but small time deed transfers, simple ROSs, etc., may suffer a chilling effect and not elect to file/record to save $100.?ÿ Clearly accurate records at the Courthouse are a boon for the community and to dun them for no intrinsic reason makes no sense.
- I don't see the "if/then" connection between filing/recording records at the Courthouse and solving homelessness?ÿ problems.?ÿ It seems they are targeting a captive audience who must use County services to fulfill their responsibilities so are easy prey.
- I've seen this ploy over and over as the decades have passed.?ÿ My annual sailboat Documentation and Ship/Aircraft Radiotelephone License fees were gratis in the '70s, a reasonable amount of $15 or so in the '80s to cover their costs and now a SARL costs $450 (every 10 years) and I gotta cough up $26 a year to keep my documentation current.
- Even common folks suffer from the Government cash grab. My 2000 Hyundai Accent 2 door registration fee when I bought it was $20 a year and now it's $124/yr, 15% of the car's value.?ÿ And it's an eco friendly 40mpg car.?ÿ
- Boozers and cigarette smokers pay exorbitant taxes even though they're only killing themselves, ostensibly to "cure" their problems by making them expensive and "protect the children" by instituting prevention programs, but the taxes go directly into the general fund to fund legislator's pet projects.
I'll not go on except to say booting all recordation costs in WA to "save the homeless" is a bad idea in the long term.
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Sounds like you will be saving up 6 months of surveys, making a cover page to make it one document with an index of the contents, and recording the whole shebang for $100??ÿ Just a thought.
Next week I will attend a Tax Auction on delinquent properties.?ÿ Some empty lots will sell for $1 or little more while some will not sell at all because no one wants them.?ÿ The current recording fee is $21.?ÿ Raise that to $121 and none of those empty lots will sell.?ÿ Just sayin'.?ÿ Some have failed to sell in the three previous such auctions so are on the list again this time.
@toivo1037?ÿ I suspect that won't work and you are tongue in cheek.?ÿ ROSs, Subdivision Maps & Deeds are filed/recorded through different conduits.?ÿ Although your devious mind has precedent.?ÿ?ÿ
Long ago Short Plats (4 or fewer new lots) dodged a lot of regulatory scrutiny.?ÿ Their purpose was to allow Mom & Pop to deed the farm to their heirs without incurring onerous fees and infrastructure requirements.?ÿ Lo and behold developers found the loophole and would short plat a big parcel, then 6 months later short plat one of the sub parcels, develop it and then short plat an adjacent sub parcel, and on to smaller parcels,?ÿ etc.?ÿ Brilliant avoidance of Subdivision Map Act strictures.?ÿ But the Counties caught on and established "Sequential Short Plat Restrictions" which limited further subdivision of new parcels for several years which killed the developer's scheme.
I tire of City, State & Federal governments nickel and diming me beyond their actual costs for required regulatory activities to support other agendas.?ÿ It's called a transfer tax and and ultimately damages the economy in the long term.
Next week I will attend a Tax Auction on delinquent properties.?ÿ Some empty lots will sell for $1 or little more while some will not sell at all because no one wants them.?ÿ The current recording fee is $21.?ÿ Raise that to $121 and none of those empty lots will sell.?ÿ Just sayin'.?ÿ Some have failed to sell in the three previous such auctions so are on the list again this time.
Probably because they're crippled parcels with major legal problems, no access, utilities and bank loans which they will pursue in court.?ÿ ?ÿThe "good" parcels in tax auctions sell for reasonable prices but there's a lot of trash that you don't want to invest in, meth lab sites for example.
Bank loan? Doesn't the buyer at a tax sale get a clean title after a redemption period? The bank would get any excess proceeds over the tax bill, but lose any other claim because they didn't make sure the tax was paid?
There may be nothing wrong with the parcels, just a lack of people who want to build in a dying rural town.
I certainly disagree with this increase.?ÿ But that's what we get for living in the land of taxes-WA State.?ÿ
Across the border a survey cost $5 to record.?ÿ Imagine that!
Bill is correct.?ÿ The owner of record or anyone else for that matter could have paid the taxes owed and kept fighting the fight.?ÿ That almost never happens.?ÿ The County Sheriff is the auctioneer.?ÿ The buyer pays the full bid price plus part of the filing fee before leaving the site.?ÿ Cash is best because in most cases the bidding stays low.?ÿ The catch is that the owner of record has 12 months in which to pay all amounts owed plus repay the buyer, with interest.?ÿ If the buyer wants to move quickly, they approach the prior owner and pay them to buy the redemption rights.?ÿ Typically, a hundred dollars or less will take care of that unless there is definite potential for quick resale.
We had a case several years ago where an investor bought a profitable motel, then turned it into a dog, used the loss in value to offset something else.?ÿ They quite literally stripped the entire building and held an auction a few months ahead of the tax sale.?ÿ All plumbing fixtures, towel racks, heating equipment, doors, you name it, it sold at the auction.?ÿ All that was left were walls, parking blocks and some windows.?ÿ There was no lender involved.?ÿ They took a little money for their redemption rights so the buyer could begin immediately demolishing the guest rooms and converting the lobby, bar and meeting rooms into a very nice looking venue for educational programs, parties, etc.
Frequently, single lots are purchased by adjoiners to expand their lawn or garden area or put in a pool.?ÿ Anything to prevent human trash (by whatever definition of the term they choose) from occupying the decaying shack.?ÿ Other times, the City will condemn the structure and have it demolished to further that same goal despite the money they lose and never get back.
Many times, the result is a case of a small time developer constructing a new house and other improvements on the cheap real estate to either have a profitable rental unit or sell for a profit in the short term.
A common problem is a property that was constructed many years ago in what is now recognized as a flood plain and is still standing but would require major investment to bring up to all other codes that might apply.
The owner of record cannot bid.?ÿ Anyone who is currently delinquent on property taxes on any real estate they own in the County cannot bid.?ÿ No standard lender will make a loan to the buyer until the redemption rights issue has been cleared up.?ÿ This does an effective job of reducing the number of potential bidders who can show up at 10:00 a.m. on a weekday with plenty of available cash to spend.?ÿ They will take personal checks but no action begins on transferring title until they have been proven good.?ÿ If they are not good, a totally different role is played by the Sheriff.
Occasionally, there will be a partial percentage of mineral rights auctioned off for lack of tax payment completely separate from the land.?ÿ That is rare as most land here still has the mineral rights conveyed with the real estate.?ÿ I purchased the mineral rights to a ten-acre tract one time simply to frustrate the fellow who owned the remaining rights.?ÿ I more than tripled my supposed out of pocket when he came up to me after the sale, handed me a wad of cash and we switched the listed buyer to be him instead of me.?ÿ He was afraid I might keep bumping him up until it would have cost him significantly more.?ÿ Terrible way to treat one of my adjoiners.?ÿ But, he would have done the exact same thing to me if the shoe had been on the other foot.
Two things were necessary for this fee increase:
1. A law mandating the recording of plats
2. Politicians working backwards to find sources of funding.?ÿ
Does WA have an active surveying society? I wonder what kind of legislation could be set in place to limit the increases in recording fees?
How can recorded plats be so important to the protection of the public if the public is taxed as if it were sinful to get a survey?
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This applies to all recorded documents such as deeds, easements, etc.?ÿ This is where they will make $
Surveyor products such as recording surveys, plats and BSPs will be a very very small part of the overall % of fees obtained from this tax.?ÿ?ÿ
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You bet, it will come from deeds and mortgages by far.?ÿ The sale price of any piece of real estate has now increased by $100. For one with a mortgage add another $100.?ÿ For one also needing a survey and another $100.?ÿ If an affidavit or two is needed to clear up an issue and another $100-200.?ÿ To legislators who deal with figures in the millions throughout the session $100 is absolutely nothing.
Imagine a scene where forty-three relatives all need to sign quit claim deeds to sign over any rights they might have in a certain tract to a specific relative.?ÿ JACKPOT
Tax sale parcels can be problematic. You get something with a sheriff's sale, but it might not be the land. I've been involved with a couple. I think the real owners of one tract allowed the sheriff's sale buyer to play around with it for years but when they needed it to sale their place they just took it and sold it along with the rest of the property.?ÿ
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That makes it even more onerous.?ÿ?ÿ
When I think of Washington State, my heart goes out to a poor pod of orcas that can no longer survive on its traditional diet of king salmon.?ÿ Maybe next year y'all could add another $50 to the cost of recording and use the money to save the whales??ÿ
We have a one-year right of redemption written into the law.?ÿ After that, the prior owner has no legal claim.
There was a recent Supreme Court case that should open the eyes of anyone getting a Sheriff's sale in this state. Basically the court said it didn't matter that the new "owner" was paying taxes and got the Sheriff's deed, he didn't own the land cause the surrounding land owner was the owner by possession. Many of these tax sale properties have the same issue so it's important to be careful. Often there is a reason the owner quit paying taxes.?ÿ
I can think of three I was involved in, the latest one cropped back up when the new owner wanted a map of his lands. The tax parcel was gone from the Sheriff's deed holder and in his ownership by deed, there wasn't a trail of title from the Sheriff's deed owner to him. But there is a court case granting it to his predecessor.?ÿ
Sorry to hear this happening in WA too.?ÿ A similar fee of $75 was added to recording documents in CA a few years ago and I fought to exclude the Record of Survey from this fee since 1) it was a surveyor's responsibility to file the map, not a landowner decision; 2) this mandatory filing requirement was not even remotely relevant to the intended subject matter of the bill, 3) surveyors are regularly disciplined for not filing these maps - so this had the potential to encourage more violations of the law, and 4) costs were already increasing throughout the state such that review/filing fees were beginning to exceed the cost to perform the survey ($1,000-$2,000 review/filing fees).?ÿ I spoke with several legislators on this to no avail.
Tax things you want to discourage.
It appears that the state of WA wishes to discourage recording...
Our statutes preclude the prior owner specifically from bidding or redeeming the property after the one year period.?ÿ Interesting to see how Montana does things.?ÿ Heck, I would simply stop paying all property taxes on interior tracts forever.
