|
Monday, November 19 2007 @ 09:48 AM Central Standard Time
|
The property-tax bill was the most painful blow for Astride Hercule -- $5,400 due April 1, on top of mortgage payments that were set to soar on her Miami duplex. ''I absolutely could not pay it,'' said Hercule, a mental-health technician at North Shore Medical Center.
So, she didn't. Unpaid property taxes in Miami-Dade and Broward counties reached record highs this year, as thousands of homeowners slumped into foreclosure, shrugged off bills on investment properties they couldn't unload, or, like Hercule, found it impossible to make lump-sum tax payments that their boom-era mortgages didn't require them to put in escrow.
Total unpaid amount: $365 million. In Miami-Dade County, 41,544 residential property owners -- one of every 16 households -- failed to pay their 2006 property-tax bills. That's an increase of 41 percent from the year before, according to an analysis of county tax data. In Broward, the number grew 54 percent to 29,962 -- about one per 21 households.
In both counties, roughly 65 percent of unpaid accounts were from investors, second-home owners, and others with no homestead exemption, the analysis showed. Tax delinquencies don't hurt governments' bottom line because the debt is sold off each June to investors, who pay up the accounts in exchange for an interest-bearing lien called a tax certificate.
Nonetheless, as 2007 tax bills arrive in mailboxes this month, the sharp rise is another distress signal that high taxes and insurance costs, rising mortgage payments and a slumping real-estate market are taking a heavy toll on homeowners.
Tax cut proposals, to be voted on Jan. 29, would offer only modest relief, and practically nothing for second-home buyers.
Vanessa Arellano Doctor
http://miamirealestateinc.org
|
|
