Central Florida property values continue to skyrocket

Yahoo

2 days ago

Property values across Central Florida are soaring this year, fueled by billions of dollars of new construction, according to the region's property appraisers.
The booming values will help boost tax rolls as local governments begin preparing budgets for the next fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1. And it may add fuel to a GOP-boosted argument that Florida homeowners are paying too much property tax.
'Interest rates are relatively high, and we've certainly seen a slow down in residential sales,' said David Johnson, Seminole County's property appraiser. 'But what we have not seen is a decline in the values, or what people are selling their houses for.'
At this time every year, property appraisers are required to provide local governments, school districts and other taxing authorities with their 'Best Estimates of Taxable Values' reports.
The reports released last week show that every local government in the region is seeing jumps in taxable values this year, with several cities looking at double digit increases.
In Orange County, Windermere leads the list with taxable values rising to just over $1.2 billion in total. That's up slightly more than 19% compared to last year.
Helping to fuel that rise, Windermere voters last February agreed in a special election to annex the gated Chaine du Lac community that abuts the town's western side, adding hundreds of new properties.
Windermere's increase was followed by Apopka — the county's second-largest city — which is estimated to see a nearly 14% jump from last year to nearly $8.2 billion worth of total taxable value in 2025.
In Seminole, Sanford is forecast to have nearly $6.7 billion in taxable property values this year, a 10.85% jump from 2024. Sanford — the second largest city in Central Florida's three-county region behind Orlando — is the only Seminole government to have a double-digit percentage increase.
A large part of that surge in Sanford is the result of recent construction of homes and apartments within the city, Johnson said.
'They've built thousands of single-family homes by Celery Avenue [near the Orlando Sanford International Airport],' he said.
In Osceola County, St. Cloud is forecast to see taxable values rise to nearly $6 billion in 2025, a whopping nearly 15% increase from 2024, according to that county's Property Appraiser's Office.
'There's a lot of new construction,' Osceola's Property Appraiser Katrina Scarborough said regarding St. Cloud. 'And we're one of the fastest growing counties in the country.'
Kissimmee's taxable values are expected to rise to $6.9 billion in 2025, a 10.5% increase from last year.
Lake's smallest cities saw the largest increases in the county, in large part because of an explosion of new home construction. Montverde led the list with a 24.6% jump from 2024 to a total estimated taxable value of nearly $212 million. That was closely followed by Mascotte, which is forecast to have a 21.8% increase from last year to nearly $602 million.
Several straight years of rising taxable values across the region have pumped billions more dollars into the coffers of local governments. For example, Orange County's budget has grown by $1.7 billion in the last five years.
That's spurred Gov. Ron DeSantis and other Republicans to recently push for either cutting or completely eliminating property taxes. DeSantis claims that Florida counties and cities are taking advantage of that largesse in tax revenues by expanding, while struggling property owners pay for it. He is advocating a $1000 property tax rebate to every Florida homeowner this December, followed by structural changes to the tax later.
But the state House and Senate, at loggerheads over the budget they need to pass by June 30, have yet to take up any property tax changes this year.
The taxable value of a property is the amount used by local governments to calculate and set property tax rates. Market value, on the other hand, is the price a property would likely sell for in the current real estate market. Market value is influenced by the condition of the property, its location and surroundings. Florida law caps the taxable value of a homeowner's primary residence, limiting the rise in taxes.
In Orange County, the estimated total market value for 2025 is $345.8 billion, an increase of 4.6% from 2024.
In Seminole, the 2025 market value is just over $87 billion, which is a nearly 4.2% increase from 2024. In Osceola, the market value is nearly $70 billion, a surge of nearly 4.3% from 2024, while in Lake, the market value is $68.4 billion, a 6.3% jump from last year.
According to the Orlando Regional Realtor Association, there were more than 12,000 homes on the market across Central Florida in May. It takes on average about 76 days for a home to sit on the market before it is purchased. As of Thursday, the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate was about 6.87%, and 5.95% for a 15-year fixed rate, according to Zillow.com