Living in Florida we are at the epicenter of the (mostly) nationwide furor over property taxes. Unrealistically high home values have driven tax bills through the roof for home buyers, while long term owners benefit from a cap on tax increases. The conventional wisdom is that the system is broken and must be fixed. In the 2006 state election cycle candidates rode into office on the wave of public discontent with the current property tax system. Last year the Florida Legislature voted to place a constitutional amendment before voters in January 2008. There’s plenty of room to debate the merits of the proposed amendment and I won’t get into that here.

This week a state court ruled to remove the amendment from the January 29th ballot sighting confusing language (see our previous post). Now legislative leaders are talking about appealing the ruling. If that fails, they want to take another crack at the issue during the 2008 legislative session in the spring.

Don’t get me wrong, lower property taxes are great! Our leaders needed to be decisive in lowering taxes. Decisiveness = speed + stability. More than anything the residential real estate market is craving stability. Until we get stability in prices and taxes, buyers will sit it out. Why buy now and risk missing out on the benefits of tax reform (some proposals such as Homestead Exemption portability would have penalized buying before the reform).

Our leaders need to be decisive now. They need to deliver tax stability to the market. If they don’t, the market will be stuck in the mud longer than is should.

On Monday, a Leon County Circuit Court Judge ruled to remove the Property Tax Relief measure of the January 29th ballot due to the "misleading and confusing" language. Here’s what it says:

Proposing amendments to the State
Constitution to increase the homestead exemption from $25,000 to 75
percent of the just value of the property up to $200,000 and 15 percent
of the just value of the property above $200,000 up to $500,000, to
subject the $500,000 threshold to annual adjustments based on the
percentage change in per capita personal income, to authorize an
increase in the $500,000 threshold amount by a two-thirds vote of the
Legislature, and to specify minimum homestead exemption amounts of
$50,000 for everyone except low-income seniors and $100,000 for
low-income seniors; to provide for transitional assessments of
homestead property under the increased homestead exemption that include
preserving application of Save-Our-Homes provisions until an
irrevocable election is made; to revise Save-Our-Homes provisions to
conform to provisions providing for the increased homestead exemption
and transitional assessments of homestead property; to require the
Legislature to limit the authority of counties, municipalities, and
special districts to increase ad valorem taxes; to authorize an
exemption from ad valorem taxes of no less than $25,000 of assessed
value of tangible personal property; to provide for assessing
rent-restricted affordable housing property and waterfront property
used for commercial fishing, commercial water-dependent activities, and
public access at less than just value; and to schedule the amendments
to take effect upon approval by the voters and operate retroactively to
January 1, 2008, if approved in a special election held on January 29,
2008, or shall take effect January 1, 2009, if approved in the general
election held in November of 2008.

After reading this, are you sure you know what you’re voting for or against? More often than not, Floridians vote yes on these constitutional amendments either due to great advertising on the part of the organizations putting them on the ballot or because of complacency (Pregnant Pigs example - does this belong in our constitution?).

As a matter of curiosity, I reviewed the results of the voting for all constitutional
amendments in each of the general elections dating back to 1994 (earliest online election results from the Florida Department of State).  Of the 50 proposed amendments, 46 passed.  One of the ones that failed was the 1994 "Limited Casinos" amendment heavily fought by the Indian Tribes in South Florida - gaming is once again a hot topic in Florida.  Also failing was the 1996 "Sugar Tax" amendment which was topic of mass television advertisements that year - narrowly defeated by the way, 50.2% to 49.8%. In fact, during the 2006 General Election, voters passed all proposed constitutional amendments including the one that would make it more difficult to put new amendments on the ballot.

Let’s have some clear language that ordinary voters understand.  We want lower taxes - so does that mean voting for or against this amendment? 

Kim’s post this morning got me thinking about a little project we did last year with respect to Florida College Football recruiting.  Florida, during a good year, has the highest concentration of top ranked "Bowl Championship Division" (BCD) schools. Although FSU and Miami are struggling this year, the Bulls of USF and even the Golden Knights of UCF are looking like contenders for national attention (The Owls of FAU and Golden Panthers of FIU still have some work to do).

The reason why these schools are usually so good is because of the overwhelming number of nationally recruited prospects in our backyard. Those that are not recruited by or sign with Florida schools are quickly snatched up by their division rivals. During our project, we looked at the 2006 football rosters from the 7 BCD schools (UF, FSU, UM, FIU, FAU, UCF) and the hometown of those recruits to look for correlations, and oh did we find some interesting things out.

First we can look at the number of recruits per city. It should be fairly obvious that cities with large populations (Miami, Tampa, Orlando, etc.) are going to have more recruits because there are going to be more high schools with more students to choose from - even making the students in those schools more competitive amongst themselves.

I don’t know about you, but this graph does nothing for me. Anybody with Excel and the ability to walk through the chart wizard can come up with this. Let’s put it in a geographic perspective - because everybody loves maps, right?

The map shows the number of recruits per city as a circle with relative diameter.  We can see here that beyond the large population centers in the state, that Gainesville and Tallahassee have a significant number of recruits.  There are several reasons for this: the presence of nationally ranked schools which attracts talented coaching staff, summer camps hosted by those colleges and availability to recruiters. One thing this map does not show is that although Tallahassee and Gainesville have large numbers of recruits - no recruits from Gainesville went to FSU and no recruits from Tallahassee when to UF.

Beyond looking at the statewide recruiting results, we can look at distribution by region. In this image we use proportionately sized pie charts to show the number of recruits from various cities and their respective school. In the state of Florida, this is a quasi-neutral area–although you have heavy Gator populations in Lakeland and Bartow. I suspect that as USF gains respect on the national scene, we’ll see dramatic changes in these results in years to come.

We have gone further with this analysis and have even looked at recruits within individual high schools. We know that the rosters of the seven BCD schools contain 12 players from Lincoln High School in Tallahassee, 10 players from Glades High School in Belle Glade (typically a pipeline of top recruits for the Gators).

Maybe in the near future, we’ll begin to look at those recruits that leave our great state and see where they’re going. Does Georgia have a presence (9 Florida players on current roster) or NC State (20 Florida players)?

One of America’s most popular sports, football, and GIS work together.  To further illustrate just how important GIS is to everyone, the blog from Florida GIS Data posted about a GIS workshop in Texas.  The workshop will show how GIS can help analyze the number of hotels rooms and occupancy rates for Super Bowl XLV.

The analysis will then be used to determine how many new hotels need to be built and where to construct them.  Amazing right?  The workshop is put on by the University of Texas at Arlington, check it out.

Introducing Tycoon, the free site that allows users to search for land based on criteria such as parcel size, wetlands, current or future land use and zoning.

In my previous post, So you want to develop land?, I introduced how GIS can help search for land. Since we are so crazy about GIS and the wonderful things it can do, we decided to create a website that helps developers and investors find land.

Tycoon is still in development, but will be available in October. To stay updated on the latest developments, sign-up at www.BeaTycoon.com.

For the past few months, we have been inundated with doomsday news reports on the housing market - and the obvious implications on financial markets. Aside from the ever so important updates on OJ Simpson and Britney Spears, our print, internet and television media are consumed by stories of mortgage companies entering bankruptcy, people losing their homes, financial markets declining, possible recession and the impending sky falling. CNN Money even has a section devoted to what they call “Mortgage Meltdown 2007“, reminiscent of the 2000 Election.

The American media prides itself on laying blame for every issue. So, in that spirit, I blame the American consumer (you, me and everybody else). In some way, shape or form, we all contributed to the state of our union. Yes, I am a capitalist. But it is up to us to make responsible, educated decisions - especially when it comes to one of our largest and most important investments, our home.

• Did you get caught up in the hype of an exotic loan without properly educating yourself or simply fell prey to an unscrupulous mortgage broker? Are you payments increasing because your adjustable rate mortgage has increased?
• Did you fall prey to predatory scam artists while trying to remedy your situation?
• Did you get into the Miami condo market because a friend told you of six-digit earnings with no effort?

At what point do we “step back and punt”? Or do we dig our holes deeper? I ask this because a new service, CardIt, allows you to pay your mortgage with a credit card. The sample fees of $44.90 they provide are on a $1,000 loan payment. According to the National Association of Realtors, the national median home sales price in 2006 was $220k. Using a simple mortgage calculator, with 10% down and 7% interest rate, your P&I payments alone are $1,300. What about es-crowed taxes and insurance?

During a time of record setting foreclosures and personal debt at an all-time high, is this fixing the problem or delaying the inevitable? Please post your comments and thoughts.

Now you can search foreclosures on Yahoo Real Estate. Go to http://realestate.yahoo.com/Foreclosures. You can search by address or zip code. This is another great example of how geographic visualization is changing the way we consume information. Not that long ago, you had to do manual research in-person at the courthouse.

Very cool.

Where do you begin? If you are new to development or new to a geographic area it can be a daunting task to find property.

In the past, developers or investors have found property through brokers, colleagues or by driving.  Advancements in technology, GIS (geographic information systems) combined with aerial photography, allow developers to search for land from their computer. 

How is this possible?  To make a long story short, many government agencies have moved their information on-line.  Everything from court records to property records.  The information is great, but searching the information can be difficult.  The only available search options are by parcel number, owner name or address.  Most often, when looking for a property, I would only know the characteristics I am looking for in a property: size (acres); general location (city) and zoning.

So, how can GIS help me find land?  GIS is an excellent tool for inputting criteria and obtaining results.  I could do the same thing in a spreadsheet document, but viewing data on a map is much easier.  To find the land I need, I would enter my search criteria in the area I want to search, say Polk County, and view my results either in tabular format or on a map. The map is important because now I can see what other buildings, subdivisions or roads are near the parcel.  Before GIS and aerial photography this was only accomplished by taking a trip to the location.  Think of the time saving potential!