Your Florida Real Estate Expert

1. - Martin Memorial Medical Center Wins ANOTHER National Award - The National Research Corporation has recognized Martin Memorial Medical Center as a Consumer Choice Award winner. The award goes to hospitals with the highest quality and image in markets throughout the United States.

2. - Martin County Businesses Win Governor's Award . . . Again! - This is the third year in a row Martin County businesses have been recognized by the Governor's office. In fact, this is the second year in a row that Martin County won more awards than any other county in the state.

The winners are :

Waterblasting Technologies, Inc
System One LLC
Seatourgue Control Systems LLC
CSA International

This is great stuff for Martin County and just further demonstrates what a great place Martin County is for work and play.

Looking for a home in Florida? - I'd welcome the opportunity to assist you with a purchase of a house or condo. For additional information please call me 772-260-5448 or visit our website FloridaHomes.PRO

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Great Time to Buy? - Yes, No, Maybe. I suggest you read this piece I wrote about how to find a Great Buy and what traps to avoid - Click Here
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Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Jennifer Bailey was recently quoted as saying the biggest challenge the system faces is "to keep morale up." In 2006 Miami-Dade saw 3,474 foreclosure cases. For the first six months of this year, they have handled 34,417. That's not a misprint.

The scary part is the first three months of this year, bankers were under a wink-wink order from Captain Obama to hold off on foreclosures . . . as if that would somehow help matters. It has not. In fact, Miami-Dade could see more than 50,000 foreclosures during the last six months of 2009, bringing the total close to 100,000 or almost 30 times what it was in 2006.

And this is not just Miami-Dade.  The Port St. Lucie market and the Martin County market are facing similar issues.

OPPORTUNITY - Banks are so screwed up at this point, that most of them are either over pricing properties, hoping for a miracle, or they are under-pricing properties . . . leaving HUGE opportunities for first time buyers, relocating buyers, investors and flippers. If you're interested in foreclosure opportunities, call me - Mike Morgan at 888-227-5217 or email me Mike@FloridaHomes.pro I'll help steer you around the traps and into profitable and secure opportunities.

Looking for a home in Florida? - I'd welcome the opportunity to assist you with a purchase of a house or condo. For additional information please call me 772-260-5448 or visit our website FloridaHomes.PRO

Sign Up for Mike's Florida Real Estate Blog - Click Here

Great Time to Buy? - Yes, No, Maybe. I suggest you read this piece I wrote about how to find a Great Buy and what traps to avoid - Click Here
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I get a lot of questions about this one.  And I get even more people that ask me why they should be paying $200,000 for a house, when the assessed value is only $165,000.  Let me try to explain it:

The definition of Assessed Value is: The dollar value of your home assigned by a public tax assessor for the purposes of taxation.

The definition of Market Value is: The price at which a home will sell for in a competitive setting.

As you can see, assessed value is NOT the market value nor what the property might be listed for or sold for.  assessed value is purely a value used for tax purposes.  In hot real estate markets like 2002-2005, assessed values were generally much lower than actual selling prices.  Moreover, most taxing authorities continued to raise assessed values as actual sales continued to increase in value, but in a bubble market as we experienced in 2002-2005, taxing authorities had to decrease assessed values substantially when the bubble burst.

Assessed values are generally equal to or lower than actual market values.  The only exception is when a market is dropping faster than taxing authorities can reassess values.  In most markets assessed values are 15% to 35% below market values.  Be careful trying to place to much emphasis in an assessed value when you are trying to calculate a price to sell or buy a home at.  You are far better off using actual sales than assessed values used for taxing purposes.

When an assessor places a value on a property a number of factors come into play, including values of neighboring properties, values of similar properties, actual sales prices, as well as a number of data points as reported to tax assessor’s office that may be different when you are looking at the home to buy or sell.

Another problem with assessed values is what’s going on inside the house.  Tax assessors, unlike appraisers, do not take into consideration, granite v. Formica in a kitchen, or tile v. carpet, or any number of interior upgrades that may or may not be in a home.

Trying to use assessed value to determine the value of a house also fails when older people may have received tax abatements or had their assessments frozen in some markets. 

The only reason you should be looking at assessed value is to compare your home to other similar homes.  If your assessed value is higher, than you have a right to ask for a reduction in the assessment.  This process can be as simple as meeting with the tax assessor and pointing out the issues, or as complicated as filing a formal appeal with the tax assessor or the appropriate court in your jurisdiction.