Joe DownsCEO & Co-Founder, Belrose Storage Group. Founder, Storage Moguls.

How a $17k Tax Hike Killed the Deal

19 May 2026 · 1 min

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In this segment, the speaker explains how a real‑estate transaction fell apart when a county reassessment dramatically increased the property tax bill. The property, slated to be bought for $1.5 million, had been assessed at under $600,000, resulting in an expected tax of about $10,000. After the reassessment, the tax liability jumped to $27,000—a $17,000 increase that made the deal uneconomic. The narrator emphasizes his principle of buying assets, not liabilities, and notes that the unexpected tax hike was the decisive factor that caused the deal to collapse.

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I'm very prideful on making sure we're buying assets and not liabilities. But the taxes were going from $10,000 to $27,000 based on the purchase price. That wasn't just like I went on the website and I checked it. It was like, hey, like they talked to the tax county assessor. The way it was written is just if you purchased for the $1.5 million that they were, the property was currently being assessed, I want to say, at like under $600,000. So it was just with that reassessment, the taxes were going to change. And well, that changed the entire deal.