The Property Transfer Affidavit in Michigan is Form 2766, also numbered L-4260. The buyer files it with the city or township assessor within 45 days of the transfer. It is not part of the deed, the register of deeds does not take it, and it is due whether or not a deed is ever recorded. Late, the penalty is $5 a day. The cap on that penalty depends on what kind of property it is, and the cap is not the expensive part.
In short
- Form 2766 (L-4260), filed by the buyer with the local assessor, within 45 days of the transfer date.
- Late: $5 a day. Capped at $200 for a principal residence, $4,000 for any other residential property, $1,000 for commercial or industrial.
- The bigger cost is the back tax: an unreported transfer is uncapped anyway when found, with interest and penalty from the date of transfer.
- The title company often sends it. The obligation is still the buyer's.
Why the 45 days matters more than the $5
The affidavit is how the assessor finds out the house changed hands. In Michigan the taxable value of a property is capped while it stays with one owner and resets to the assessed value the year after a transfer. That reset is the whole reason the form exists, and what uncapping does to a buyer's bill is the larger part of this story.
If the buyer never files, the reset does not disappear. MCL 211.27b says that when the assessor discovers an unreported transfer, the taxable value is adjusted anyway, and the buyer is levied every dollar of additional tax that would have been charged from the date of transfer, plus interest and penalty from the date each of those taxes would originally have been due. Then the daily penalty on top.
The gap is not small. Take the defaults from the uncapping calculator: a $325,000 purchase, a seller whose taxable value had drifted down to $95,000, and a 38-mill rate. Capped, the bill is $3,610 a year. Uncapped, it is $6,175. That is $2,565 a year the assessor will come back for, with interest, for every year the transfer went unreported. Two years unfiled is over $5,000 before the interest and before the $200.
What the penalty actually is
The daily rate is the same for almost everyone. The ceiling is not, and this is the part most pages skip. From MCL 211.27b(1):
- A home you own and live in as your principal residence: $5 a day after day 45, up to $200.
- Any other residential property, which means a rental, a second home, a flip you have not moved into, a house bought for a relative: $5 a day after day 45, up to $4,000.
- Commercial or industrial property: $20 a day after day 45, up to $1,000. Above a $100,000,000 sale price, a flat $20,000.
The arithmetic is short. Ten days late is $50. Forty days late is $200, which is where a principal residence stops. A rental keeps counting: it takes 800 days to reach the $4,000 cap, and an investor who bought four doors in one year and filed none of them is looking at four separate clocks.
How to file a Property Transfer Affidavit in Michigan, in order
- Get the form. Form 2766 is a two-page PDF from the Michigan Department of Treasury. It asks for the parcel number, the date of transfer, the price, the buyer and seller, and whether any exemption from uncapping applies. The current revision is dated March 2025; a township's own copy may be older, and the state one is the one to use.
- Count 45 days from the transfer date. Not the recording date, not the day the keys were handed over, not the day the title company mailed the package. A closing on 15 September 2026 has a deadline of 30 October 2026.
- File it with the assessor for the city or township where the property sits. Not the county, not Treasury. Many assessors take it by email or through their own page; Detroit and Royal Oak both publish one. If in doubt, the assessor's office phone number is on the local government's website.
- Keep the proof. A date-stamped copy or the confirmation email. If the assessor's records ever show no filing, that is what settles it.
- Then the Principal Residence Exemption. A different form, a different deadline: June 1 to affect the summer levy, November 1 for the winter one. The deadline strip under the calculator lays the whole sequence out from closing.
The mistake most people make at step 3
Assuming the title company filed it. Closing packages in Michigan often include a signed affidavit, and the title company often does send it. Often is not always, and MCL 211.27a(10) puts the obligation on the buyer, not on whoever handled the closing. Ask, at the table, who is filing it and when, and get a copy of what was sent.
The second mistake is thinking an exempt transfer does not need the form. A transfer between spouses or certain transfers to close family do not uncap the taxable value, but the form is where that exemption is claimed. Not filing does not claim it.
What we build for this
For agents and teams, the affidavit is one of three dates that land on a buyer after closing, and the buyer has stopped reading emails by then. Our real estate page describes the post-closing filing sequence: the affidavit deadline, the June 1 and November 1 exemption dates and the first uncapped bill, computed from the actual closing date and sent under the agent's name rather than ours. The buyer hears from the person who sold them the house, on the day it matters, and the agent does nothing to make that happen.
If a buyer of yours is inside their 45 days right now, the form link above is the whole fix. If you would rather never think about the 45 days again, talk to us.
