South Florida Real Estate Blog

FROM THE MIAMI HERALD (3/11/07)

BY MARY ELLEN KLAS
meklas@MiamiHerald.com

TALLAHASSEE --By year's end, Florida's much-maligned property tax system will be changed and millions of property owners will likely save some cash.

How much? Stay tuned.

Legislators began their annual 60-day session last week and declared property taxes a top priority. At least four ideas have emerged; none likely to be the final product. All share the same goals:

• Lowering property taxes for all Floridians, who have seen property values spike and taxes escalate in spite of the now depressed real estate market.

• Ending or offsetting the inequities in the 15-year-old Save Our Homes tax cap, which has left similar homes in the same neighborhood to be taxed at vastly different rates depending on when the owner took up residence.

• Making homeownership more affordable by, among other things, ending the tax barriers that have locked many elderly Floridians into their homes because they can't move to a smaller home with a higher tax bill.

SEE THE WHOLE STORY

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

I have a friend who has been looking to buy an investment property.  He says the heat in the market the last few years has kept him out of it but he swears that he'll get in after everything drops, "to normal."

I have to shake my head every time I hear this.  I know that the days of double digit gains are over and we're at the point of actually shedding a few percentage points of value for the next year or so, but things are not going backwards.  We will not lose 10 or 15 percent of value.  I believe that the insurance refunds and the pending tax cuts may actually re-invigorate the market and we will be back to the nominal 5-7 percent increases we used to see before the turn of the century.

What do you think?