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Those of us paying taxes at the top have only one hope. We hope to have enough capital to stay here. But as sale prices decline, we can force the assessments down and have an immediate impact on our taxes. At the same time all the long time residents will see their tax rates climb at 3% a year. That’s the bright side.

And those long time residents are bitching because they thought that their taxes would be frozen, too! THey don't understand how far below their assessed value they are.

I'm in a bit of a different situation. Since I'm in the process of getting my green card, I can't get homestead excemption. I'm treated like a snow bird. I have to pay the full assessed value on my home every year. Next year, I can get the homestead excemption so I am very happy about that. I bought just before the big run up, so I'm OK there. But I did hear prices went down another 5% in June.

But Citizens did something dirty to me, and to everyone else so they can raise premiums without raising rates. They claim that the cost of rebuilding my home is greater than the cost of the appraised value of my structure and land! So my premium went up 10%. Now Citizens is sending me to a small FL based insurance company. Since it is smaller than the top 20 companies in FL, they can charge rates higher than Citizens. Found out I'm going from $3K per year to between $6-8K per year. the best thing I can do is move to another house and be forced back into Citizens because this company is only taking over FL policies, not writing new ones! At least I don't have to worry about the tax hit since I'm paying the max anyway.