Save our Homes Florida NOT such a savings...?

Save Our Homes Florida NOT Such a Savings...?

An article in the Miami Herald attempted to shed light on a longstanding issue with the save our homes program. It does not reward long time home owners. If you owned your home well before the current boom and bust cycle there is a strong argument being placed by the articles writer that you will be assessed a higher tax rate because the value of your home is currently STILL less than what will be this years assessed real estate value. That means you will be assessed a higher value than last year. Where the writer does not give clarity but definitely sounds the tax alarm bell is homestead exemption and homestead exemption increase limits (austensibly 3% per annum or until current market value is reached).

The good news for current homebuyers is that they will see a drop in value which, we all knew was coming. What this writer fails to see is the mathematics drumming the alarm beat for long term home owners. It would seem that a key component was not included in the article. That component is to discuss property value increases that are NOT homesteaded and therefore NOT locked into a fixed rate of increase.

Further, in these trying times for municipalities and school boards it can only be imagined that any scheme possible would be cooked up to increase their coffers. As real estate brokers we see the current movement of home prices up and down as a normal phenomenon. Even the occasional historical (and steep) market movements we are seeing are not without precedent.

Look to those communities that have balanced growth management at the community level. That is to say, a place that does not pin it's hopes and growth solely on the greater number of units it can squeeze into its boundaries but rather the quality of life they can provide their community within the confines of their current financial intake. In the end, too many people look to growth to solely solve our financial problems.

It is moments like these where you realize that we have to get back up,  dust off from our financial fall, heal our wounds and see that growth for the sake of growth will not save our homes but rather growth management will.