Why do Florida property taxes vary so much?
Fleeing high property taxes in Texas, I am considering investing in other areas, including the Tampa Bay area. I have noticed that property taxes are fairly high but seem to vary a lot. (And yes, I know Florida has no state income tax; I'm very familiar with that explanation for high property taxes in Texas.)
If what I find on realtor.com is accurate, the annual tax on a single-family home worth about $300,000 is well over $5,500 in Valrico, Lithia, Riverview or Davenport, but the tax is close to $2,600 in Palmetto, $2,900 in Plant City and $3,900 in Kissimmee. What explains this huge difference? I have read a bit about Community Development Districts. If those are similar to what I have seen in other states, they appear to be a way for developers to make new homes unfairly competitive against existing homes without CDDs, because the costs of infrastructure are pushed onto future property owners rather than priced into the new homes. I can understand that areas without CDDs would have lower taxes, but I don't know if that accounts for the variation.
Also, it seems that the public school ratings have little relationship to the amount of taxes collected. True?
Then there's the bottom line: In my experience, rents in the Austin area have not gone up as much as property taxes in the last several years. Is the same true in the Tampa Bay area? Increased taxes would be tolerable if the rents kept up.