Hello Rocketship,
In the short sales I have worked on, any tax liens are paid off & the bank takes that amount & adds it to their loss. You as a buyer are not responcible for the unpaid taxes of the previous owner.

Hi Rocketship

Every municipality operates differebtly, however I can tell you from experience that Ann Arbor does not usually go off of what you pay for the home. They look at market conditions and price ranges as a whole to assign each home an assessed value.

If you're curious on a particular home I'd recommend talking to someone in the assessors dept who can give you an idea of what range taxes will be in

Rocketship,
It depends some municipalities will lower but not to a 5000.00 mark. Other townships won't lower at all.
I wish I could be more specific but I have had clients try to get lowered in some and it didn't work, whereas in others it did.

But, the assessors take into consideration all the homes in an area, so if you are in a subdivision they will look at those.

Keep in mind your purchase price is only part of the formula for determing property taxes. They do not assess your home alone on an island, it is done with others in an area as a whole, some voodoo is used, and then they determine your assessed value.
Meaning, it isn't as simple as your sales price divided by 2 x the millage rate. That can be a decent guidline for some properties but with "distressed" properties it almost never works to give you an idea of your actual tax rate.
Frankly my recommendations to clients is usually on the conservative side--if the property was sold previously within the last 5 years I tell them to assume the SEV/Assessed value won't change much.