Palm Beach Real Estate and Loans

- now it's up to the Voters who will cast their votes on January 29th, 2008.

I hate to admit it, but I actually bought the newspaper this morning.  I generally prefer to get my information on-line instead of wasting any change on the paper!  But this morning something caught my eye when I was getting my first coffee - and I mean coffee, not half-caff, 2 pump hazelnut, frappa, semi-frozen, non-fat whipped crap - just coffee.

There it was - a POSITIVE story on THE FRONT PAGE of a newspaper!  Damn, I'll take the plunge.

Back to the taxes.

For quite some time now the lawmakers in the State House and Senate have been juggling around ideas of what to do with Florida's crazy property taxes.  Everyone agreed that something needed to be done, but that's about where any agreement ended.  There were quite a few good ideas going around - just very little cohesiveness.

Finally, a plan passed the Senate (35-4) and the House (97-18) and now the final decision will be up to the Voters who go to the polls on January 29th - both for this and the Presidential primary.

I'm not going to go into the political part of this because what we really all care about is how this will benefit an owner / buyer of Palm Beach real estate - or anywhere in Florida for that matter.

Here are the basics of the residential part of the proposed plan:

•  We all know that we get a $25,000 dollar exemption on our Primary real estate - that will be increased to $50,000.
• Assessment increases on second homes will be restricted to no more than 10% per year 
• Both of those changes are only on the non school related part of your taxes  - that way the schools won't be affected by the cuts.
• Lastly the 'Save our Homes' portability will finally be available.

As a Realtor® I feel that the portability will make a big impact on real estate activity.  Many Floridians have been shying away from buying new homes because they were going to be slaughtered with a tax increase.  That won't be a problem any longer as buyers will be able to transfer up to $500,000 of their SoH tax benefit when buying a new home.

The vote on 1/29 is going to be very important - if you want your opinion to count, make sure get to the polls!

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