The Volusia County Property Appraiser’s Office has released the 2022 preliminary tax roll, and the revised numbers follow the upward trend in real estate values.
“Everything went up by double digits in the whole county,” Deputy Appraiser Jan Cornelius told The Beacon.
The latest counts of the worth of lands, houses, buildings and other human-made improvements show Volusia County’s just value at $84.8 billion — an all-time record, and a $3.3 billion jump from the 2022 pre-preliminary value released in late May.
The just value denotes the total estimated market value of all real property within the county, before any exemptions are applied.
The county’s total taxable value, sometimes referred to as the tax roll, is likewise higher than it was just a month ago, now amounting to $48.8 billion. That is a half-billion dollars higher than the month-old figure.
As the Federal Reserve Board raises interest rates to curb inflation, and as prices of construction materials and fuel hit record highs, there are reports of slowdowns in development elsewhere in the country, but, Cornelius says, “we haven’t seen this yet.”
“At least in the first quarter, things were still strong,” she added.
Indeed, the hot real estate market in this region and throughout most of the Sunshine State has resulted in leapfrogging values and prices. Frequently, Realtors say, haggling over prices is rare now, and buyers and investors are submitting contracts that exceed the listing prices, especially for homes.
Reports of a slowdown in construction and development elsewhere in the country are not to be seen in East Central Florida — not yet, anyway — as more people from other states settle here and keep the prices of property on an upward track. Can Florida stave off a recession or a decline in values?
“Florida will have more of a tapering off than a drop-off,” Cornelius said. “From what we’re seeing, with the first half of the year — we’ll just have to wait and see what happens in the second half of the year.”
“Daytona Beach has the LPGA/[Interstate] 95 area that is exploding,” she noted.
There is also a surge of interest in a part of the county that heretofore was often ignored before the second space race started.
“Oak Hill has really come up, because of people working at the Cape,” Cornelius said. “Developers are starting to find it.”
Oak Hill’s tax roll thus far totals $172.3 million, a 15-percent gain over the 2021 figure of $149.2 million.
The preliminary tax roll, which state law requires county property appraisers to complete and release on or before July 1, includes the millage rates and calculations of the rollback tax rates. The rollback rate is the figure, which, if levied, would generate property-tax revenues equal to those of the prior fiscal year, without taking into account new construction or, in the case of cities, annexations.
In a normal or stable real estate market, the rollback rate declines when values rise, including the values of land, building supplies, labor and energy.
During the Great Recession that began in 2007-08 and lasted through 2014, property values fell, and local governments and other taxing authorities dependent on ad valorem taxation often raised their millage rates to produce the levels of revenues they had collected before the downturn.
