Lee County Appraiser encourages review of property assessments
Island real estate not easy to categorize; values hold steady
If property owners have questions about their assessments that came out in recently sent Truth in Millage notices (TRIM), they have until Sept. 17 to contact the Lee County Appraiser’s office online at leepa.org or call (239)533-6100.
“The first thing is, I encourage people to call us,” said Lee County Property Appraiser, Matt Caldwell. “Most of people’s concerns get worked out informally; 95 percent resolve it.”
While there is a formal appeal process, most situations do not require that. Questions are welcomed.
“No one has to apply for an appeal for a factual error,” said Caldwell. “We are required to fix that, 365 days a year.”
The “TRIM notice” is shorthand for Truth in Millage. It details the “just value” of a property, in accordance with Florida’s Constitution. In Florida, the “just value” is 100 percent of the actual value. County leadership uses that estimated amount to plan for budgets and set the tax rate.
Caldwell said that prices have moderated in Lee County.
“Values were absolutely on fire because of COVID,” said Caldwell, citing some years when valuations for properties were up 30 percent.
Here in Southwest Florida and particularly Lee County, pricing additionally reflects that properties were repaired after damage from hurricanes, particularly in Sanibel and Fort Myers Beach. Many numbers were skewed and moved back and forth because of hurricane damage, which is considered in a valuation.
Boca Grande was not damaged as much as Fort Myers Beach and Sanibel and Captiva, and that is why numbers have not been nearly as variable. Valuations have held, however, as with years past. Potential buyers in Boca Grande are sometimes “a little immune to the swings of reality.”
“There are different market dynamics there,” said Caldwell.
Part of the TRIM notice are the number of exemptions that each property owner receives. Those should
be detailed. Exemptions include first responders, veterans, disabled veterans, seniors of limited income, and even deployed service member exemptions. There is also a $5,000 exemption for the blind and disabled. That exemption had been at $500 until recently the state changed it. Until the change, it had sometimes been only about an $11 discount for the average household.
Of about 550,000 properties in Lee County, approximately 225,000 have a Homestead Exemption. The valuable Homestead Exemption can be lost if a house is held in an LLC or used as a rental property.
The Save Our Homes exemption, which caps annual increases in rates, adds a new twist, as that is dependent on the number of years in the program. These discounts are important especially in Boca Grande, as well, as prices have skyrocketed. If a resident has kept a house on the island for decades, they will be locked into the lower tax rate.
If property owners have an issue with an appraisal, in most cases this can be resolved without a formal petition. But the petitions are easy to file with the Lee County Clerk’s Office, and they are resolved separate from the Appraiser’s Office.
“We can usually resolve them. We will talk through it,” said Caldwell. “We get a handful of people that get bent out of shape. It’s all part of the process.”
Last year, in Lee County, there were 3,800 appeals filed. There were only about 150 hearings.
“We never discourage someone from filing an appeal,” said Caldwell.
In Boca Grande, valuations are often hard to calculate, as many of the houses are so different. It is not like comparing apples to apples, and Caldwell has come out here to do them personally, as staff was so busy in the aftermath of Ian.
“After the storm, I actually took the responsibility for the field inspection in Boca,” said Caldwell. “We had so much to do because of the hurricane.”
Being here after storms, he said that it is gratifying to see how modern hurricane building codes have worked, yet some earlier 1970s construction did not hold up. But historic buildings did. The three-bedroom, two-bath house model is really great,” said Caldwell. “It’s a lot harder, objectively, to do the Gulf side houses in Boca Grande. It does take a little bit more of the art of appraisal.”
“All of that is built out of heart pine, harder than concrete,” said Caldwell. “It is tough to kill heart pine.”
Today, there is a much broader understanding of appraisal and valuation, and the “professional amateurs” using Zillow, Redfin and Realtor.com can learn much, as estimates change by the moment.
“They use the same theory of mass appraisal,” said Caldwell. “They are trying to be a solution for the whole world.”
But it is still sometimes tough to get a value for local properties, and different pricing models have different strengths and weaknesses.
“We have to be more accurate than Zillow,” said Caldwell. “We only have to focus on Lee County.
