> concerned about mosquitoes and inundations; any ideas?
Then you should not be in south Louisiana. An outright river/stream/flowing bayou isn't as bad as land that's all water under the surface. And all of lower Louisiana is wet. Yet people live there (and in South Jersey; and here in my sloping-swamp).
Gators.... bah, no worse than bears, just watch your dog.
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Property (land+building) taxes are figured different in different places.
In general you MUST fund a School System, by far the largest single local government budget. Perhaps ~~85%-55% of your tax bill. There's maybe 2:1 difference between a costly school and a cheap school. There's additional cost for police (zero here, very high in the city). Libraries and welfare and such. Sewers, though the trend is to make sewer-bills self-funding.
For obscure reasons the tax is computed in "mils", which is like percent except 1/1,000 instead of 1/100.
In my area the Assessed Value is, as near as possible, the Current Fair-Market value. Our place was listed at $189, it barely sold at $149, we filed for a re-check. While they had (approximately) accounted for the market slump, they had not known how bad it had been run-down since the last on-site inspection. They came back with a number a bit higher than what we (in a fair market) had paid.
We also have a Personal Property tax, basically business stuff even if stored at a residence. The previous owner had a painting business, we showed the inspector that we don't do that. You may need to consider the value of a home studio or gear collection.
I have known other areas where assessed values were stuck in a time-warp, 1970 prices. Too much work to re-compute to current market. This "can" be fair, but inequities accumulate. Whatever, they take the required collection and divide it into the artificial value-sum and that's the rate.
Tax value computations are all short-cuts. Land is acres times a constant, but different constant for certain "better" land. My per-acre rate is about 1/5th of an acre on Bayside; water-view is generally MUCH more expensive (I'm a mile back in the woods and would need a 70 foot tower to see the sea). If you don't NEED water lapping your property, you probably don't want it (and vice-versa).
450 feet of Water Front here (near the sea) would be a bloody fortune to buy and pay tax on. I guess bayou is worth less, but still money. (Argh: I added 300 feet of ditch; I hope they don't call that "water front"!)
Louisiana is different in many ways. Google "Slidell, LA 70458 tax" and you find your way to the parish Assessor's Office:
http://www.stassessor.org/tax-calc.html
Assessed Value is a *percent* of Fair Market Value". The example shows 10% to get 'value", then 170 mills (0.170) tax rate.
Many states have "homestead exemption" on your Primary Residence. This is a bid to buy the votes of many single-home owners, at the expense of multi-home owners. Their example shows a serious discount.
All that said: I can't make sense of that tax listing. I guess a "$215K" residence should pay $1,500-$5,000 per year. (The high end would include cop on every corner and personal tutors in the school.)
Ah.... assume old-values and it is listed as $87,300 for tax purposes. Throw-down 10%, $8,630. Times 0.170 mil-rate, $1,484 tax to pay. That's in-sight of what I'd expect to pay. BUT it seems the _max_ Homestead exemption is $7,500. $8630-$7500= $1,130 taxable value. Times 0.17 is $192 tax due. Not quite the $223 in the listing; maybe most folks can't get the max homestead exemption.
I suspect when you pay $200K, the old "$87,300" fair market value will be updated to $200K. Times 10% magic number, times 0.170 mil-rate, is $3,400 per year, also a reasonable value for a nice residence. After some time you file for Homestead. Maybe a single guy can only claim $5K? Then $20K-$5K= $15K, times 0.170 is $2,550 per year.
The listing Real Estate agent will have the tax bill. For many reasons, it won't be what you will pay. The agent surely knows which way it will go. S/he is not strongly obligated to tell you, especially since tax assessors' offices are pretty opaque or capricious.
