Cape Coral / Ft. Myers -- are the houses free or what?
 

The price decline in Cape Coral-Ft. Myers gets mentioned on the news and in yahoo headlines all the damn time. Are they giving houses away free down there? I thought that was a place for old people and easy going middle aged people. Why would prices have skyrocketed in the first place? Why are they dropping faster than Vegas?

If the houses really are free I'll take 2. I'll throw in an extra $50 for a 1 bedroom condo facing the water.

Wait until you see the property tax bills ;)
WG

Dude, I can't believe I found your ICQ in a forum post from 2001 on a different forum and you didn't hit me back. I deserved a nugget of knowledge for my effort. :winkwink:

good luck kard

My friend just bought a house down there. Moving from DC. Guess it's a huuuuge price difference.

I did accept your request.
WG

Property taxes are adjusted yearly based on sales for the previous year.

You pay property taxes on a fair market value and you get a $50K homestead exemption.

The property taxes range from 1% to 1.5% in most places. So property tax on a $150K house would be: $150K - $50K (homestead exemption) = $100,000 * .015 = $1500 tax bill. Once you are homesteaded your assessed value is locked in and can only rise 2% a year, regardless how much the value increases.

Your post may have been an issue a couple of years ago... but mainly to those who were low budget folks who could not afford the house to begin with... and the realized they had to actually pay taxes. Read this as subprime people who were renters their entire ife.

I never considered the property taxes to be issue what-so-ever.

Wow! Good luck.

Wow, in Indiana houses that are about $250k have annual property taxes of of about $4k and that is after homestead and mortgage exemptions. Sounds like Florida is a smidge cheaper.

Cape Coral had the chance to be a nice community. Close to the beaches, houses on waterways and middle to upper class living. It was meant to be a place where a young professional could buy a home. What happened was the undesirable types moved in. The kind who don't maintain their property or contribute to the community. It's now a straight up ghetto run over by thugs and all the " good " people have left. They can't even give houses away there. The only worse place than that is Leigh Acres on the other side of Ft. Myers.

On the east coast of Florida, Miami, Ft Lauderdale they ran out of room to build, but 80 miles west in Ft Myers and Leigh Acres lots of cheap land they over built and the market crashed.

If you're talking about Florida it's 3% a year not 2 %.

I lived in southwest florida from 1972 to 1994. I did the masonry work on the Cape Coral Hospital. I've watched that whole area explode in growth as you've said but Cape Coral and Leigh Acres lost it way before the market crash :Oh crap

yes they are

You think its bad now? Give it a few more months. The houses in South Florida are a buyer's wet dream, but I wouldn't touch them because its going to get worse. Oh well!

:2 cents::2 cents:

A lot of it depends on where you live. I had 10 acres in Florida that cost me 250 a year in taxes. Had a house and barn

Try being a property owner that doesn't live there. Luckily, IN is so bass-ackwards that they can't even keep up with sending out their own tax bills.

Do you lose more than the homestead exemption? Is there some extra way to screw you if you are out of state?

I am not sure how many exemptions I lost. I know I lost the homestead and that was huge.