Florida Real Estate tax debacle

Both the Senate and House of the Florida legislature have come up with one of the dumbest "solutions" that I've ever seen. What they want to do is eliminate the property tax on homesteaded real estate and on other residential real estate and replace the current 6 percent state sales tax with a 8.5% rate.

This will give Florida the distinction of having one of the highest sales taxes in the country. Add on the 1.0 to 1.5 local county amounts, and Florida may just as well start a value added tax system.

This does not solve the property tax problem. It simply will reshuffle it.

The high property taxes, are a function of our elected officials simply spending, and spending based on the the assessed valuations. These valuations are in turn, based on the boom years of 2004 - 2006. They will start coming down.

The issue is that ones property tax is based on the assessed valuation times the govenmental millage rate. The valuation will go down, but our elected officials will raise the millage. What to do?

First, let's have some low spending commissioners and the like elected and throw out the spend and spend Lyndon Johnson types. We elected them, we can "de-elect" them. They are NOT some monolithic entity that the citizenry can't get rid of.

Secondly, Governor Christ has a very good idea. Have a constitutional amendment where the govenmental entity can increase its expenditures only by the increase based on population growth and inflation. He wants to go back to 2000 to start the calculations. This is a very good start.

He says that schools should he exempted. I disagree. Same formula.

In Sarasota County, the expenditures have been basically tracking this approach. The schools have not, and maybe, and just maybe, the school board can listen to its citizens and reign in the expeditures, and finally fire the current director.

Taxes. As Lord Acton said: "The power to tax is the power to destroy. "

In the meantime, keep checking out Real Estate On The Internet for new properties to buy, and use it to help sell you property.

Earl

Sarasota sales are up!!

Stephen Frater of the Sarasota Herald Tribune reports from several local real estate firms that sales are up. See his full article in the Sarasota Herald Tribune February 19, 2007

Times good for Lee County, Fl renters

There is a very knowledgeable broker in the Ft. Myers area: Frank D'Alessandro with the firm of Gates D'Alessandro & Woodyard Commercial Realtors. 239/425-6000 http://mailto:fdalessandro@dw-cr.com. His latest article he looked at rent valucs in the Cape Coral - Ft. Myers area. A suprising factor: there has been a rent decline which is counter intuitive to high sale prices. Good article.

Save on Taxes

This past week Bob Bruss had another article entitled: Your home business can help you save on taxes. First rate. Upcoming he will have one entitled: The ten most often overlooked realty tax breaks. Check his site and subscribe: http://www.BobBruss.com

Great Real Estate articles

Robert Bruss has a wide circulation of real estate articles: taxation, construction, marketing and such.

As an example one of his latest is "A tax-free business:'Serial home seller'. Great article. Subjects in this one are: Tax law encourages profitable tax-free home sales, How to make profitable home improvements, The major drawback of being a serial home improver, and finally How to pay for the improvements.

Check out Bob's website at: http://www.BobBruss.Com.

Blogging Florida Real Estate: Blogging Florida Real Estate is back open

Http://www.RealEstateOnTheInternet.biz

Blogging Florida Real Estate is back open

Our offices have been moved, now connectivity installed, and we are going to be posting lots of articles, and listings from WWW.RealEstateOnTheInternet.Biz. So let the blogging begin.

Earl Niemoth

Monthly North Port Networking lunch Thur. 26th

Good Evening:Join us this coming Thur. at 11:30 at the Olde World Restaurant, 14415 Tamiami Trail in North Port.

Our agenda includes: “Year-end tax planning”, by Cheryl Reuter from Tax Savers.Lot and house sales reports and market info:

Open mike: your opportunity to advertise your steals and deals.

Self-drive area tour maps to South Gulf Cove etc. add your property to the tour ???

Resp,Willis MillerLANDAMERICA INC.WWW.mrlandman.com 941-378-37801-800-329-3780



Earl Niemoth

Please visit:

WWW.RealEstateOnTheInternt.Biz

To All Port Charlotte REIA Members:

To All Port Charlotte REIA Members:

We will be meeting this Friday for lunch and a meeting.
We will be at the International Super Buffet at 2200
Tamiami Trail. Lunch at 12:00 Noon and the meeting
will run from 12:30 to 1:30 pm.

For any additional information, please call Ruth or
Jeff at 941-726-4162, or you can email us at:
jeffhertzberg@cs.com

We now have a message board set up under yahoo groups. Go to the following link to sign up for the message board.
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/PortCharlotteREIA
Earl Niemoth

Please visit:

WWW.RealEstateOnTheInternt.Biz

Back to Blogging

It's been awhile, but the work on WWW.RealEstateOnTheInternet.Biz has consumed prodigious quantities of time. I also turned on the Bid To Own process at WWW.BidToOwn.Biz. It's up and alive, but there is a ton of work to be done.

I'm going to posting some good economic news, and real estate articles.

So back to work for now.

Earl

Not a pretty economic picture???

Larry Evans is an Editorial Writer for the Sarasota Herald Tribune. As such he published the above article on August 6, 2006. The article is based on an interview with the Sarasota County School District's Budget director. This is the guy who couldn't estimate the number of students enrolling this past week. This resulted in the School District having to FIRE some 50 teachers.

The article is a classic New York times whine and cry and beat up on George Bush. Some of the whine comments are like "Per household debt has risen 42 percent over the past five years." Let's take that as an accurate statement. Unfortunately the data isn't compared with anything.

In the past five years, we have experience about a 20% increase in price indices. That explains half of the "increase". Why do people increase their debt? Because they can pay for it. The population is making more money today than ever before. Simply to to WWW.IRS.Gov and obtain the annual study of income taxes paid.... and these numbers are AFTER the Bush tax cuts.

So I have to disagree with the conclusions of Larry.

Earl

What goes up, must come down

A 303% increase in Sarasota County residential real estate prices, when four price indices only had increases ranging from 30 - 50%. We are now in the down part of the ride, and the down ride will probably last 2 - 3 years. How far down? Well one way to figure this is to look at real estate pricing over the long term. Say 50 years. Residential real estate tracks pricing indices. These include not only CPI, but also contruction indices. Taking the highest level of 50%, back that into the average price starting in July 1996 and do the math.