Mortgage Help During COVID-19 Crisis, But What About Property Taxes?

Without relief, property owners hit hard by illness or income loss will have to cover payments due May 1 or incur penalties

Homeowners are facing a May 1 deadline for paying property taxes.

By JOHN REITMEYER , NJSpotlight

To ease the economic pain of the coronavirus pandemic, New Jersey homeowners have been granted mortgage relief from banks and a reprieve from evictions. But no such help has been approved thus far from local property tax bills.

That means many homeowners who are dealing with economic hardships caused by severe illness, the loss of a job or a shuttered business are also being forced to cover quarterly property tax payments by a state-imposed May 1 deadline.

Potentially making matters worse for thousands of New Jersey homeowners is the state’s recent freezing of all funding for the next installment of Homestead property-tax relief benefits. They were supposed to be paid out by the state as direct credits to effectively reduce those May quarterly bills, but Trenton is facing its own economic shortfalls.

Read the rest of this entry>