Taxation Commons^™

Michigan homebuyers face large potential discontinuities in property tax obligations for purchases made around January 1 and May 1 under the state's application of acquisition-value based assessment limits and principal residence (homestead) exemptions, respectively.  Consistent with incentives, roughly 3.7 percent of sales concluded in the first 10 business days of January are thus attributable to timing responses among the subset of properties listed by the largest 25 percent of firms by sales volume.  Underlying this effect is a willingness to stretch the number of days between contract and closing dates by an average of 2 to 4 business days per …