April 24: Chat At 11:30 Today

Here's how today's chat will work. At 11:30 a.m. I'll put up a new post here with the headline, "The April 24 Chat Is Open." We'll use the "Comments" link of that announcement to post questions, comments and answers. Just keep refreshing the comments page to get the latest.

If there are lots of folks, it will be helpful to space out the questions; no sense everybody posting a comment at 11:30 a.m. all at once. If nobody shows up, I'll just go eat lunch.

The comments link to this post is now closed. To take part in today's chat, add a comment or question to the item above headlined, "The April 24 Chat Is Open."

Comments

[Hank Stansbury]

re: The great property tax debate

Would it be possible to simply set the cap on a sold homesteaded house at 10% of the currently listed value of that house? Then limit any future increases to the Save Our Homes 3% maximum.

This would mean the counties would not revalue the home to the current ‘fair market value’ at time of sale but could still increase the value listed at time of sale by a maximum of 10% if such increase were warranted.

This would apply only to homes that had an existing homestead exemption on them at the time of sale, not new construction or sale of rental or vacation properties.

In that way if someone sells a home in Hernando the buyer could be assessed a maximum 10% increase in the Property Appraiser's currently listed value of the home taking the $150,000 value up to $165,000 rather than being adjusted up to what the Property Appraiser may decide is the ‘fair market value’.

The same scenario would apply if someone purchased a home in Nassau County. The sellers home could be value increased by a maximum of 10%, the buyer would apply for Homestead and fall under the save our homes provisions.

Now Hernando County could have a small increase but keeps at least the same revenue from the sold house and Nassau County has the same outcome.

There are no rollbacks, no service cuts, no job losses due to lack of funds in the counties and neither home buyer gets hit with a huge tax burden just because they bought a different house. There would also be no need to make any adjustments to the sales tax.

Anyone think this would work? Am I missing something obvious that would doom this? Would the impact on new construction be such that it would be a disaster? It just seems too simple.

Darn good idea!

[Samantha M]

What peaked your interest to make you research this topic? Was there a specific event?