Tax Realty Consultant

Property taxes on Chris and Danny Wielandt’s Egg Harbor City home increased tenfold to $5,300 since they purchased their Buffalo Avenue home in 1976. And so, in what has become a classic New Jersey tale, they moved.

They left in May for a house in Concord, N.C., which is twice the size of their old one - with about one-fourth the property taxes. They regret nothing.

“New Jersey has made it very difficult for you to live there, especially if you’re on a fixed income,” said Chris Wielandt, 62, who, with her husband, Danny, receives Social Security income and two pensions.

It is an anecdote that is a standard feature in gripes about New Jersey, and it has become the subject of one real estate firm’s amusing pitch to do more business.

“Who is the next person you know who would like to sell their home and leave the high expenses, taxes and congestion of N.J.?” reads the postcard, citing the Wielandts’ story. The Keller Williams Realty Jersey Shore recently sent these postcards out to about 800 homes.

“I hear it from a lot from people,” said Richard Haviland, a broker salesperson at the Absecon office. They mainly are retiring empty-nesters who have lived here for decades, he explained, and, “unfortunately, many of them they feel like they’re just fed up with the New Jersey taxes, the real estate taxes.”

Haviland estimates that the portion of his business derived from people moving out of state has increased from 5 percent to at least 10 percent over the past five years. The postcard was one of the monthly pitches Haviland’s company sends to residents on its mailing list.

Whether you find this funny or disarming, it is a phenomenon backed by numbers. A Rutgers University study last month revealed 72,000 more people left New Jersey than moved in the last year, costing the state about $680 million in tax revenues.

In a 2005 ranking of state and local property tax collections per capita by state, the Tax Foundation awarded New Jersey first place for having the highest taxes per capita in any other state.

“We had to go where we could get the most bang for our buck,” said Chris Wielandt, who had been vacationing in North Carolina for 13 years. She retired as a special probate clerk at the Atlantic County Surrogates’ Court; her husband was coordinator of housing maintenance for The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey.

Haviland said clients have varied complaints but, “Number one is taxes. … The taxes have gotten more so in recent years.”