Broward County Property Appraiser Marty Kiar gave a presentation on the functions of the Property Appraiser’s Office, property values soaring in Oakland Park, and the significant issue of Title fraud in South Florida.
Property Appraiser Functions
There are several functions that the Property Appraiser’s Office handles. The Property Appraiser decides the value of every piece of property in Broward County for tax purposes. The date that all property is valued by the Property Appraiser’s Office is January 1st. The value of an existing owned property is decided by all of the comparable sales from the previous calendar year.
The Property Appraiser also assists property owners with tax exemptions for those who qualify. There are numerous exemptions available under Florida law, the most important one by far being the Homestead Exemption.
If your home in Oakland Park is your primary residence, you are registered to vote in Oakland Park, and all of your vehicles are registered in Oakland Park, you qualify for the Homestead Exemption.
This exemption takes $50,000.00 off the top of the appraised value of your property. More importantly, it protects homeowners going forward from that first-year exemption. Every year after that first year, their taxable value cannot increase more than 3% per year.
There are other exemptions available for seniors, veterans, the disabled, the visually impaired and widows. You can stack the exemptions you qualify for to further reduce your property taxes.
Oakland Park Property Values Soar!
Mr. Kiar then spoke about current property values and statistics in Oakland Park.
Property values in Oakland Park have skyrocketed just like all other cities in Broward County. Vast numbers of people have moved to Broward County and Oakland Park, and they are paying top dollar for properties.
For example, in 2021 if you took all of the residential and commercial property in Oakland Park and you sold it all on the open market, the proceeds would be around $5.88 billion dollars. Fast forward just one year and there has been around a 20% increase in market value on those properties to around $7.46 billion dollars which is a significant increase. This increase is greater than in almost every other city in Broward County.
Title Fraud / Owner Alert Program
South Florida is the number one location in the world for property Title fraud.
This insidious crime is perpetrated by criminals who walk into any county recording division office with fake deeds on real people’s properties. After filing, these criminals take those fake deeds and they try to extort property owners for money, or they mortgage, rent, or sell the property, without the owners’ knowledge. They target the most vulnerable populations including seniors, veterans and the disabled.
The reason that they can get away with these crimes is that by law, all county recording division offices must, as is their administrative duty, accept whatever documents are presented to them.
To combat these crimes, the Broward Property Appraiser’s Office created a system for property owners so they can fight the fraud before the fraud occurs. About a year ago they launched the “Owner Alert Program.” This free program is available on the Broward Property Appraisers website at BCPA.net.
Property owners can go to the BCPA.net website home page and click on the “Owner Alert” button to sign up for the program. The Property Appraiser’s Office will verify that it is indeed the legitimate owner signing up, and then, going forward, any time a document, legitimate or otherwise, is presented to the County Recording Office, an alert will be sent instantly to the property owner to alert them. This way property owners can jump right on any nefarious actions so that no illegitimate changes can be made to their property records. So far about 180,000 Broward County residents have signed up for the program.
The Broward County Property Appraiser has joined forces with law enforcement and is vigorously pursuing prosecutions for any title fraud crimes and those who commit them.
If you have any questions for the Property Appraiser, you can contact the Property Appraiser’s Office at (954) 357-6830 for more details, or visit their website at Marty Kiar – Broward County Property Appraiser.
