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Monday, November 20, 2006
When builders hold fire sales
Eve Samples’ story in Sunday’s paper detailed how Lennar unloaded its last few homes in a Martin County development for big discounts.
The practice raises a number of prickly questions, including this one: How will the tax man appraise identical homes that sold for much different prices?
Mark Andersen, one of the residents who paid Lennar full price, wondered if, in addition to paying more for his house on Fleming Way, he would get stuck with a far bigger tax bill each year.
But Assistant Martin County Property Appraiser Mike Fribourg told Eve his office will use a formula that assigns a similar market value to homes of the same model in the same development.
It gets tricky, Fribourg said, when potential buyers walk away from deposits in large developments, and builders discount prices by that forfeited amount.
“That gets to be a real difficult analysis,” he said. “When a developer has pocketed a $50,000 deposit from somebody else and they only need to make $250,000, is the sale price $250,000 or is the sale price $300,000?”
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New online pricing tool adds to confusion
Web sites that estimate the value of your homes are all the rage these days, but good luck making sense of the valuations offered by Zillow.com and Cyberhomes.com.
I looked at five homes for sale in Palm Beach and St. Lucie counties. The results:
319 N. Lakeside Dr., Lake Worth
List price: $525,000
Cyberhomes value: $571,626
Zillow Zestimate: $520,048
Palm Beach Property Appraiser: $430,065
4198 Saint Lukes Lane, Jupiter
List price: $335,000
Cyberhomes value: $397,683
Zillow Zestimate: $312,378
Palm Beach Property Appraiser: $250,000
624 Pine Lake Drive, Delray Beach
List price: $649,000
Cyberhomes value: $704,781
Zillow Zestimate: $651,981
Palm Beach Property Appraiser: $432,303
515 N. County Road, Palm Beach
List price: $125,000,000
Cyberhomes value: Not available
Zillow Zestimate: $51,514,364
Palm Beach County Property Appraiser: $56,039,392
6770 NW Daffodil Lane, Port St. Lucie
List price: $254,900
Cyberhomes value: $349,965
Zillow Zestimate: $319,910
St. Lucie County Property Appraiser: $263,800
Notice a pattern? Cyberhomes is quite generous in its valuations. When I looked up my own crib, though, Cyberhomes’ estimate was $88,000 below Zillow’s.
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