Friday, August 16, 2013

Florida Rebounding with Foreigners' Housing Cash

Record foreign investment in Florida housing over the last three years is boosting property-tax revenue in the localities hardest hit by the recession.

In the 10 Florida counties that have had the largest influx of international cash since 2010, property-tax assessments have risen by an average of 4.1 percent this year, according to state records. That’s nearly twice as fast as the rest of the state.


“It’s all been attributable to the foreign buyer,” Norman Edelcup, mayor of Sunny Isles Beach, a city of 21,000 north of Miami where values jumped 10.2 percent this year, boosting tax revenue.

The purchases are helping localities in south and central Florida recover from the 18-month recession, which ended in June 2009 and left the state with the second-highest foreclosure rate, behind Nevada, depressing prices and tax revenue.

Even with the buying, prices in most parts of the state haven’t returned to pre-recession levels. In the metropolitan areas of Miami and Tampa, prices are about 40 percent below the 2006 peak, according to an S&P/Case-Shiller housing report released July 30.

Foreign investment in Florida residential property has been rising since the end of the recession, according to a March report by the Washington-based National Association of Realtors.


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