Hedge Fund Tries To Screw County on Property Taxes

Bloomberg:

Thousands of brick houses line the streets of Huber Heights, a leafy suburb of Dayton, Ohio, named for the builder who developed it in the 1950s and nurtured its growth. Until this year, his family was the town’s biggest landlord, with a third of all rental housing. Now the tenants’ payments are being routed to a $9 billion hedge fund. Magnetar Capital LLC, investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission for its housing bets leading up to the property crash, acquired a rental business in January with about 1,900 properties from Charles H. Huber’s widow. In April, its management company applied for the largest cut to property tax assessments in the county’s history. The move could curb funding for public schools, the police and fire departments and services to the disabled, said Montgomery County Auditor Karl Keith....
On April 1, the new property managers asked to have the assessed value on 1,218 residences in Montgomery County cut by 49 percent, to $50 million from $98.6 million, according to Keith, the county auditor.
Vinebrook co-founder Daniel Bathon, a former Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc. investment banker, said the tax cut will help them invest more in the properties, which will increase their attractiveness and value over time.
“We’re going to improve the resident base for the town, which I think is a big asset to the community,” he said in a telephone interview from Huber Heights.
The assessments, based on a combination of comparable sales and estimates of cash flow from income properties, are considered fair market values, so resale amounts are lower if they go down, Keith said. The reassessments could influence surrounding property values, if local homeowners follow suit.
“Other property owners might look at those and see those as evidence their properties are worth less,” Keith said.
Granting the appeal would reduce property tax collections by $1.39 million, including as much as about $800,000 to Huber Heights City Schools, equivalent to about 16 teaching positions, and curb financing for community colleges, police, fire, libraries and services to the disabled, according to Keith.

Leeches on society. Sort of like great vampire squids. I'm really sick of corporations avoiding taxation and passing the tax burden onto their workers and the rest of society.  It's absolute bullshit.  These fuckers could use a conscience.