Yes escrow will pay the property taxes generally until the next period with prorations made accordingly.So yes for an example of a closing on march 1 the seller will be debited the proration of the second half of the property tax year based on the assessment that was determined at the beginning of that tax year. Similarly the buyer will also be debited from coe to the end og the tax year, escrow will pay the county and it will be done. Of course this is assuming the seller didn’t make the second half payment yet.
Now once the property is reassessed, then depending on the reassessment the buyer may or may not receive a credit with the supplement. If the assessor feels that the purchase price was signicantly low the assessment will be higher then purchase price.
So one hole in the process is if escrow gets the assessed value from the recorders office. The recorder generally doesn’t get the assessed valu until september which coincidetally is when you get your tax bill. So let’s say you are closing escrow in say sept and the assessor has significantly reduced the assessment but it wasn’t released to the recorder yet. So when that escrow closed both sides would have prorations based on the higher amount. Similarly the escrow company would have payed the first half based on an incorrect assessment. Also the proration debited from the seller would have been incorrect (to high). So after that closing happens the seller cannot retreive that overpayment from the county. They have to go to escrow who will then have to go to the buyer to try to get the overprorated amount back
Anyways thanks for correction as I was out in space.
