He Turned Down a Farmer’s Proposal. His Property Taxes More Than Tripled
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Just because someone is smart doesn’t mean they always make the best decisions.
It’s probably safe to say that most attorneys are very smart, but that doesn’t mean they always understand the consequences of every decision they make.
In this story, we hear about an attorney who moved to a rural neighborhood, and a neighbor who is a farmer approached him to explain a deal he had with the previous owner.
The attorney didn’t like the deal but thought he could do better.
Keep reading to find out how this whole situation really backfires for the attorney.
Don’t tick off your farmer neighbor, you may have to pay for it.
So this didn’t happen to me, but an attorney that I work with regularly as part of my job. He moved from a very high COL area to our rural community.
Sold his $2,000,000 house, paid off and inherited from his grandparents, and bought 50+ acres with a huge house in a bedroom community that has a lot of dairy farms.
He always used to say how it was much better living up here, both in terms of the lifestyle and monetarily, as his urban $2,000,000 house had property taxes in excess of $40,000 / year.
Now, in addition to the huge house, the property was mostly fields, 40ish acres, and had a 10-acre or so large woodlot.
A neighbor explained the agreement he had with the previous owner.
After he moved into his new house, the attorney was approached by his neighbor, one of the area dairy farmers.
The farmer told the attorney how he had a handshake agreement with the former owner of the attorney’s home/property.
The farmer would mow the fields for hay 2-3 times per year and would harvest a sustainable amount of trees out of the woodlot.
In exchange, the former property owner got 10% of the chopped wood, which was more than enough to heat the house all year long without having to run the oil boiler for anything more than hot water.
The attorney drew up an entirely different agreement.
The farmer wanted to keep this arrangement going, as it had worked out well for both parties for over a decade.
The attorney thought the former owner was being taken advantage of and refused to do a handshake agreement, but told the farmer to give him a week to draw up a proper contract.
The farmer was not overjoyed with making this out to be more than a gentlemen’s agreement, but agreed to come back the following week.
The attorney decided that what would be “fair” was that the farmer should pay him $1,000 each time he mowed the fields for hay, since the farmer would feed the hay to his cows for “free” otherwise (completely ignoring that the farmer was using his own equipment and time to do the haying) and that the lawyer deserved 50% of the chopped wood, not 10%, or at least the 50% of the revenue the farmer got from selling the excess chopped wood (again ignoring the equipment and time investment of the farmer).
As you can guess, the farmer refused.
Over time, the attorney started to realize there were some problems by not agreeing to the original agreement.
This all happened in late 2019, when the fields were rather bare and the supply of chopped wood for the house was full.
Well here comes 2020 and now the fields start looking like garbage, because none of the other farmers will pay to hay the fields.
In fact, after speaking with the first farmer, all of the other area farmers are unwilling to mow the fields unless the attorney pays them $1,000 per mowing.
And, of course, come wintertime the attorney’s woodpile is depleted and he has to use the oil boiler to heat his entire home, costing well over $300 / month in winter heating costs.
The farmer got his revenge.
Now we come to early 2021, tax prep season.
The farmer, being a good a dutiful community minded citizen, informs the town that he did not cultivate any of the attorney’s land for the entirety of 2020, nor did he know of any other farmers who did.
Well, as it turns out this is a big deal, because in our state farmland is assessed at a much lower value than residential property and additionally has a seperate and lower tax rate.
This is getting expensive!
The attorney’s land had previously been entirely zoned as farmland, except for the house and a few acres of lawn around it.
Now, the town sent out an assessor and rezoned the entire 50+ acres as residential, which more than tripled the taxable property value and imposed the residential tax rate rather than the much lower farm tax rate.
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The attorney was quite surprised and furiously told me, and everyone else we work with, all this past week how he’s going to sue the town because they now expect him to pay $50,000 / year in property taxes.
The attorney really should’ve agreed to the original agreement, but it’s too late now.
Let’s see how Reddit responded.
This person calls the attorney an idiot.
Someone in Texas weighs in.
This person knew what was coming.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an artist who made sure to leave the walls of her home blank and boring before moving out, even though they were covered with gorgeous murals before then.
Another person shares their perspective.
The attorney really messed up. He shouldn’t have been too quick to assume he knew better.
His decision was quite costly.
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