April 20th, 2010Home Sales Taxes And How FL Foreclosures Impact Revenues
Florida property taxes and how Florida foreclosures affect them needs to be examined closely by people in charge of running the Sunshine State especially those tasked with collecting property tax revenues, regardless of how little or how much revenue will be generated during this real estate bust. Florida has finally been forced to deal with this issue much as many other states have had to deal with it for a little bit longer, it seems.
Think of it like this; a person who turns in his keys and walks away from his home has no obligation for any future taxes, though quite a few cities and towns are going after these people for taxes they owed. The loss of these revenues, which often aren’t made up by the banks who now own the properties, can hit a city or town hard. And the likelihood of any fast sales have evaporated lately.
Of course, much of the problem has deeper roots than just the current “boom” (if one wants to call it that) in foreclosures. For years, Florida’s base economic expectation had been built upon a sandy foundation called “speculation.” When it works well — which it had been doing for years — the economy benefits, and the Sunshine State surely benefited from it for quite a while.
However, when the bottom falls out of a market, or when the inevitable bust finally follows the boom (as it has, not only in Florida but in most other states as well), such speculative investment can hurt more than might normally be the case. For example, consider the ocean of people who’d bought into homes they couldn’t afford with the expectation that they’d “trade up” after selling their old home for a handsome profit.
Many of these owners looked at the properties they were buying into and gambled that they’d be able to get out of them with a nice profit before the low interest rate loans or adjustable-rate mortgages they took out to get the property began to adjust upwards. But the bottom of the market fell out from under everybody quickly, meaning these homes are now unable to be sold for at least what they were purchased for.
These days, many homes in the Sunshine State are being held by folks who are unable to meet the monthly payments due to mortgages that have adjusted and they may also have lost jobs during the recession as well. It’s kind of a fairly vicious cycle and there’s no area of the economy that goes untouched by it, including and most especially in the matter of property taxes and sales of homes.
With FL foreclosures continuing a steady climb, it’s just as sure that municipalities and even the state can expect a continuing drop in tax revenue collection. Property taxes are used to pay for a great many services a city or town or the state offers to its citizens, including schools and police or fire protection. Whether it was wise to rely so heavily on such a shifting base is a question for another day. The need at present is to deal with the reality.
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