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Tax bite varies door to door

Save Our Homes is a godsend to longtime homeowners, and something else to recent ones.

By SHERRI DAY
Published March 31, 2006

HYDE PARK NORTH - Robert Gess doesn't miss much.

He knows everybody on his stretch of Horatio Street from Newport to Delaware avenues. He stays informed on real estate issues.

Gess, 80, remembers reading that a house across the street sold for more than $400,000. He recalls the house around the corner that sold last year for more than $700,000. He's aware of pending developments, including the nearby Verano, with 65 condos and townhouses from the $400,000s to the mid $900,000s.

"If you're buying a $1-million condo, just think of the taxes on that baby," Gess said recently while taking a break from gardening. "They're paying big money."

Gess isn't. He bought his tidy white bungalow for $12,500 in 1954. Last year, he paid about $1,000 in property taxes, according to Hillsborough County property appraiser records. Some of his neighbors paid five times that much.

Gess' block of 1920s bungalows exemplifies what some politicians and homeowners say is wrong with the Florida Save Our Homes Act, which took effect in 1995 and caps the annual increase in taxes for homesteaded properties at 3 percent. Legislators designed the amendment to protect homeowners from being taxed out of their homes. The result, though: Often next-door neighbors in virtually identical houses rack up vastly different tax bills.

"If we had to identify the No. 1 complaint, it would be 'Why do I pay $5,000 and my neighbor pays $2,500 and has almost the same house?' " said Warren Weathers, Hillsborough's chief deputy property appraiser. "The reason is, the neighbor has been there for 12 years, and they have had their growth capped."

Helped by soaring real estate values, the most drastic examples of the property tax gap in the county are in established neighborhoods where longtime homeowners live next to new buyers. Neighborhoods in south and central Tampa have some of the county's biggest disparities, according to a property records analysis by the St. Petersburg Times. Areas ripe with in-fill development such as Ballast Point, Oscawana, Historic Ybor City and Tampa Heights have some of the largest differences in the amounts homeowners pay, the analysis shows.

So does Hyde Park North, where Gess lives. Aided by a $25,000 homestead exemption, Gess pays taxes on $71,000, not the $303,000 property appraisers figure his house could fetch in today's market. For longtime homeowners, that's the beauty of the tax cap.

Gess pays a lot in taxes compared with Edith Norman, a 93-year-old woman who lives on nearby Orleans Avenue. According to property records, she has one of the county's lowest annual tax bills: zilch.

County appraisers valued her house at about $23,000 several years ago. That valuation makes Norman one of about 6,000 homeowners in Hillsborough County who pay no property taxes because of their low home values, Weathers said. Most of the others live in mobile homes.

Gess remembers when his property taxes totaled $96 a year. But those were the days when the neighborhood was a rowdy, almost undesirable place to live.

Sit on his front porch and Gess will unearth the neighborhood's past. He remembers watching a man stab another man in broad daylight and comforting his wife when drunkards stumbled and mumbled their way down the street at night. He figures that atmosphere helped him snag his 2,300-square-foot home at an affordable price.

Gess can spin tales of decades when the block teemed with children, who often held plays on the front porches of bungalows. Every spring, church folks visited a neighbor's bungalow on Sundays to pose for pictures in front of hearty azaleas.

Now, the block is a mix of working professionals, retirees and teenagers. There are lawyers, teachers, nursery owners, a real estate agent and Gess, now a widower.

Richard and Charlene Sorenson moved to Horatio Street from Davis Islands last year. A likely increase in property taxes never factored into their decision to buy the 1922 bungalow next door to Gess. It sold for $460,000, property records show.

"It's not something that really crossed my mind," said Richard Sorenson, a psychologist. "It just seemed like the cost of doing business of being in the area. We'll pay whatever (the taxes) are."

Sorenson said he was unaware of the big differences in property tax bills on his block. But he doesn't mind the disparity, unless his bill greatly exceeds what he paid on Davis Islands.

Sorenson will have to wait to find out. Because the couple have been in their home for less than a year, the property appraiser has not posted their new bill. (Another Horatio Street homeowner paid $420,000 for a house in 2004. Taxes on that property were $5,861 last year, records show.)

Two doors down, the Winiareks think about property taxes a lot.

Grace Winiarek bought her 1921 bungalow from her father in 1990. She paid about $62,000 and appreciates having a relatively low $1,600 annual tax bill.

Still, she wants to move. Developers plan to build townhouses on the lot next door. She fears that the three-story buildings will dwarf her, but wonders if she can really afford to move. For now, she plans to keep a close eye on legislators in Tallahassee, who are wrangling over the future of property tax caps.

"If they let me take my tax cap, I'm out of here because it's getting congested," said Winiarek, a real estate agent. "I (want) to stay in South Tampa, but basically, the taxes are my main problem because you never know if you get sick and can't afford the taxes."

Lately, Gess has been thinking about taxes, too. He has been upgrading his property and knows that his work could drive up his home's value and its taxes.

From his porch, where he has kept a close watch on Horatio Street for 52 years, he'll look for property appraisers.

"I see them with that pad," he said, recalling years past. "They stand there and look, and they write and write. I know what they're up to ... I just put an $8,000 roof on this house. When they come around the next time and see a new roof, I'll bet you any money that my taxes will go up a little bit.''

Times staff writer Matthew Waite contributed to this report. Sherri Day can be reached at 226-3405 or sday@sptimes.com.

[Last modified March 30, 2006, 14:39:36]