Property Taxes in Puerto Rico -Assessment of the Property (Part 3 of 4)

Good morning!!

I hope you had a fantastic weekend! Here is the next video on Property Taxes un Puerto Rico. This is part 3 of a 4-part video. So enjoy and I hope it is useful to you.

Have an amazing week.

Truly yours,

Santiago Lampón

PROPERTY TAXES IN Puerto Rico – ASSESSMENT OF THE PROPERTY

Hello my name is Santiago Lampón, I am a lawyer and a notary in Puerto Rico and I welcome you to Puerto Rico Legal Video Blog. This is part 3 of a 4-part video or episode regarding property taxes in Puerto Rico. Part one, I discussed a brief introduction to the issue, part 2 I discussed registration and you should watch them, you should watch all parts. In part 3 I am going to go into the assessment of the property. That is the word we normally use because that is the best translation to the word used by the CRIM, but it’s nothing like… it’s an appraisal of the property.

Why I like using the word assessment instead of “appraisal”. The word appraisal automatically brings forth oh well we are going to hire an appraiser, we are going to look at market value. No, CRIM doesn’t work that way. CRIM assesses properties. They put a value to it. I don’t know the formula, I am not even going to try to find out what is the formula and why it works that way, but usually assess values are lower than market value which is beneficial to a tax payer. When you file to register a property under your name, if the property exists, most likely it is not going to be reassessed they will continue with the value on the books.

A few years back a law was approved that all assessed values with were very old for many years were multiplied by ten, that’s how old they were. Even by multiplying them by ten they didn’t come to press in time market value. Not even with the reduction of market prices for properties all over the world. So, anyway, when you have a property let’s say you are purchasing the property and it is already assessed and it has already been invoiced the amount of taxes, not a problem. But if you are registering a property for the first time meaning that the previous owner, the one who is selling to you or if you are the owner when you are going to sell it, it has not been assessed, if it didn’t exist at the record it is going to be assessed. They are going to register it under your name, they are going to create a brand-new record for it and then they are going to send someone to the property to check it out, to see how many rooms do you have, how many driveways do you have, how big is it, how many bathrooms you have.

As a matter of fact, the new forms that we the notaries have to file after closing with the treasury department (its another agency) is being reportedly shared with a CRIM. So, that the CRIM can identity, this has more rooms from what we have on our records, this is bigger construction because you pay taxes for the land and you pay taxes for the structure. So it is very important if you are purchasing property in Puerto Rico that you check, because it is the client’s duty, it is not the notary, the broker will help but it is actually a duty by the parties to get the accurate information regarding the CRIM.
Well, I hope you find this information helpful, you should go over and watch number 4. If you have not watched number 2 and number 1 you should do it as well so you can get the full package.

My name is Santiago Lampón, a lawyer and a notary in Puerto Rico. You can send me your questions by sending me an email or you can just go ahead and give me a phone call or post them on this page. Email is the best one. I hope you had a great day.