Real Estate Disruptors
Let's Disrupt Real Estate. What is Real Estate? Not all markets are created equal. Gulf Coast to Space Coast talks to the leaders in the industry throughout Florida just as if we were sitting across a dinner table. OH! and our hosts and guests change with every episode just to keep you on your toes. We cover the Gulf Coast of Florida to the Atlantic Ocean, think Tampa, Clearwater, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Daytona Beach, Space Coast, Miami. We talk about investing, marketing, staging, and many many more related topics. Start listening to the Real Estate Disruptors and see what Real Estates Past, Present, and Future will bring?
Real Estate Disruptors
Unlocking Property Tax Relief: Expert Insights with Mike Twitty
This episode delves into property tax relief options available for homeowners affected by recent calamities, focusing on the procedures for claiming refunds and the significance of the Save Our Homes cap. Tune in for expert insights on homestead exemptions, tax assessments, and actionable steps residents can take to secure financial relief in uncertain times.
• Discussion on partial property tax refunds available for displaced homeowners
• Application process and important deadlines outlined
• Explanation of the refund calculation based on days displaced and structure value
• Insights on the Save Our Homes cap and implications for long-term residents
• Clarifications regarding reapplying for homestead exemptions post-rebuild
• Importance of community engagement and resources for property owners
• Tips for realtors to assist clients in navigating tax processes
Hey, welcome back to the podcast everybody. I am Mike with my co-host, amir. Hey, good morning everybody. It is the Real Estate Disruptors podcast. We're kicking off in 2025. We had the Honorable Mike Twitty on with us on the last show. There's so much information. Mike agreed to come back. That's awesome. He's a great guy and help us out, so we kind of left it on a cliff. Mike, how are you doing, man?
Speaker 3:Good to have you back, great, great to be here again.
Speaker 1:Forgot our VIP is here. Mike's our frequent flyer too. I think this makes number four, that he's come and shared and done the you know, reaching out to the public and, like you said, getting the right information out there. We really appreciate that. We've been in trying times and I'm sure you guys are a little busy over there in your office.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Lots to do on top of our normal duties, but we're just trying to help people, give them some facts and some answers in a time that there's a lot of uncertainty. Yeah, they need to cling to some advice that they know they can take to the bank and is accurate, that they know they can take to the bank and is accurate. So, listen, we left this off hanging on. There might be some kind of tax relief for the homeowners out there, the taxpayers. Do you got any kind of thing that they should know about to save some money?
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's a potential partial property tax refund that they can apply for. So those that were displaced their home was basically uninhabitable for 30 days or more they can submit an application to our office. It's a like department of revenue four 65 form, you know, but they can find that easily on our website and and and make that application again right now it's now we're building out a web form to streamline that even more, to get away from a PDF-type application. So that should be operational.
Speaker 1:So if it's 30 days or more, they're able to apply for a partnership. That's awesome because we know employees, staff, everything that are displaced right now still living in hotels.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, and they have up until March 1 to make application. So March 1 of 2025 is the deadline to make that application, because we really want to know how many days they were displaced. That becomes the numerator in the equation. You know it's number of days displaced over 365. So if it's Helene, that's roughly about 25% of the year, and then the calculation is only based on your structure value. We're back to structure value talk again. So it's what your structure contributes to your overall property value. So let's say that was 33%, a lot of properties, it's about a third. So 33% times 25% times your, the tax bill you paid in 2024 turns into your refund.
Speaker 2:Hey, that's really good stuff for Pinellas County to come out and do that for, you know, for the residents and whatnot. And you know, that's where I think. When we were talking last week, you know people need to just everything got into chaos. But if they just slowed down and, you know, backed up a minute, systems are in place to, you know, get people back to maybe being whole or, you know, helping them out. At least there's a lot of different programs and so you know whether they got to do a forbearance with their mortgage and whatnot. Now Pinellas County has a refund with property taxes. They don't have to, you know, fork that. So with the, with the refund, is that a credit that's going to the next year's or is that going to be actual cash coming to them or it's actually a true refund that comes back in early 2025.
Speaker 3:Okay, so it's a refund against your 2024. So, unfortunately, they have to pay their 24, but then they can. They make the application for the refund and the tax collector. We process the numbers, we do the math because I think we're better at the math than the tax collector, I do too and then we send that on to them. Then they issue the refunds.
Speaker 1:Okay, Okay. Well, that's nice. That's kind of like not a way you should use your savings plan, but I'll take it Right. Anytime you get a check in the mail versus a bill, it's a good day, it is definitely Well, good stuff.
Speaker 3:People just need to keep in mind you know, in a lot of cases they might have had a. They already have a Save Our Homes cap that's really protecting so much of their value yeah, and a high percentage of their value is in their land and their extra features, so they may not be getting back as much as they thought. But I just want to lay that out and they'll see the formula, how it works when they make the application.
Speaker 1:So, mike, I know you guys are so busy over there and your site is so just kicking rear. I love it. Ton of information, everything you need is on there. But if you find some people that sometimes just can't dig around and find the site, what's the best way for them to contact your office? You have a chat box on there. Do you want them to call? Do you want them to email? Do you want them to send a smoke signal? What do you?
Speaker 3:want yeah, so the easiest way, I mean first of all the phone. Our average on hold time is nine seconds, so you're going to get a lot.
Speaker 1:I think that's up two seconds from the last time you were here.
Speaker 3:Mike.
Speaker 1:I think it was seven.
Speaker 3:Well, we've had storms to deal with so yeah, the phones have been busy, but we get them triaged very quickly and get them moved on to somebody that can answer your particular question.
Speaker 1:So we're going old school. Yeah, so calling on a.
Speaker 3:so that's 727-464-3207. And then, of course, the website has a ton of information at pcpaogov, and then if you want to shoot an email in, our general email box is simply mike at pcpaogov, so we call that. That's our Mike mail, awesome.
Speaker 1:And you guys respond to that quickly. I know because I've used it and we really appreciate that about you, you got some good people working for you over there? Yes, we do. I'm very fortunate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the property appraiser is a wonderful, wonderful site and you know, like we talked last time I mean when you built the new one, I mean on steroids it's really, really a value add. I I know you just touched on the Save Our Homes cap. When it comes to a homeowner who's going to have to either raise their property or they're going to have to demolish it and then rebuild, how does that affect their Save Our Homes cap and is it going to make their property not value but their assessed value increase, which is ultimately going to increase their property taxes?
Speaker 3:Right, that's a great question. Um, we're getting hit a lot on social media um about, well, I can't rebuild cause I'm going to get treated as new construction and that's going to be a deal killer for me.
Speaker 3:Right. Well, what they what many aren't aware of is there is a provision in Florida statutes called the calamity provision, and it protects your assessed value from moving up to 110% of your original square footage. Okay, so the only the you know if you're building at grade would be no issue. The issue is most people have to elevate, you know, in these situations. So when you elevate, if you enclose the lower portion, that is, additional square footage, it's going to bring you over the 110. If you put the same living in the air and then did a full enclosure below, so you would get taxed for the excess. However, we bring that on the roll at a much, much lower rate than living space. So, generally, just using simple numbers, if base costs were $100 a square foot for living, a garage would be 35% of that. So 35%.
Speaker 1:So you just treat it straight up as garage space, right, okay?
Speaker 3:Right Garage or utility.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 3:You might have an entry. Generally you're going to have an entry, so you might have a small area of base at that lower level as you enter the property, but usually that's under a couple hundred square feet and then the rest would be garage.
Speaker 1:So it's an improvement you definitely want to get a hold of, because it increases the whole value of the property.
Speaker 3:And you can leave it open too. So if you leave it open, then it goes down even further, because now it's basically a carport, yeah, instead of so you can be down in that, you know, 15 to 25 ish kind of range.
Speaker 2:Yeah gotcha, gotcha, no, that's. Uh, I mean great that you guys are putting that together. Um, so when it comes to, is that the same with a, you know, a commercial building, if some you know some of our residents own a commercial property?
Speaker 3:So the calamity rule applies to commercial as well. Okay, so homestead or non-homestead property, the 110, same way. Now, one thing that we do to get to that number and we have some information on our site that goes into how we calculate that but we use a thing called effective area. So, as we talked about a garage, is 35% of base. We do basically a weighted average of all your square footages and apply that weighting to get to this effective square footage that puts everybody on an apples-to-apples basis, right. And then we need to know, okay, what are you going to end up with? Square footage that puts everybody on an apples to apples basis, right. And then we need to know, okay, what are you going to end up with, so we can identify those sub, sub areas and figure out should that be a hundred percent, should that be 35%, should that be 15%? And and then get a new effective area to compare to figure out what that excess is going to be.
Speaker 2:Understood.
Speaker 3:I know that gets complicated. So what we're trying to do internally challenging staff with building what we're calling a calamity calculator which will allow people to get an estimate of the tax delta or tax change between where they are today versus where they would be with a new build Gotcha.
Speaker 2:And is there a timeline that somebody has to have the repairs done or rebuilt completely by, or they're going to lose it or anything along those lines?
Speaker 3:So the timeline is you have five years from the January one following the event to pull your first permit, to start your, your rebuild activity.
Speaker 2:Gotcha Okay. So for this they have until 20 or 2030, essentially five years from January 1 of 2025. Is that correct? Yes, okay, so get it done. Yeah, yes, yeah, that's a pretty good.
Speaker 3:And that's a recent statutory change. It was three years and it actually effectively becomes five on January 1 of 2025.
Speaker 1:Okay, all right. After the rebuild, the repair, do they need to do anything to submit to your office for the homestead exemption?
Speaker 3:Do they?
Speaker 1:need to reapply for homestead. How does that all?
Speaker 3:work, they don't need to reapply. They don't need to reapply. It's very good for them to communicate with our office and just let us know their intentions, just to make sure they don't check something wrong on their homestead renewal that we send out each year that says, oh, I left the house or I'm renting it. If they want to keep their homestead intact, they need to do so and not apply anywhere else. We will address it appropriately. We can reduce their the structure value, you know, because they're going to knock it down.
Speaker 3:So it's it's always that snapshot in time on january 1. So if it's demoed before january 1, we'll typically get, we'll pick up on the demo permit. We'll send them a letter, we call it a demo letter and it'll say we, we, we found, we found this demo permit. Do you intend to continue to make this your homestead? You know, and we give them the rules of the road, just can't file anywhere else. We'll keep homestead on it. It'll keep the save our homes cap on that property until they come back. And then on calamity, it's a little bit different because on calamity you literally get the exact. You start with the exact same assessed value, that that you left with Gotcha.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 3:As opposed to if you just were to knock your house down. You're going to lose the improvement value, and then you're going to scale down your, your, your save, our homes cap will be based just on land and it'll prorate down slightly.
Speaker 2:So in that scenario the person would if they demolish their property going to rebuild, they essentially can't go and purchase another house and make that their primary.
Speaker 3:Right, they can, they can they can go buy it and they can live in it. But if their intent is to keep that that calamity damage property as their homestead, just leave your homestead there.
Speaker 1:If you filed homestead someplace else in the interim, then you just lost your cap, correct?
Speaker 3:Right and it's going to get pulled and then you won't have, you'll lose calamity and understand what that cap is.
Speaker 3:That's the difference between your assessed value and your taxable value, and that's a big deal if you've been there for anything more than three or four years right and some people think well, I'll port over to the new one while the other one's being built and then but you're, they're gonna lose in in that math because the clamp, the calamity is really holding that down in most cases, gotcha so it's better for them to go and rent someplace else.
Speaker 2:well, every his buddy situation is going to be different, right? You're not going to lose as long as you keep the homestead on this property. That's going to be different, right, you're not going to lose as long as you keep the homestead on this property. That's going to be your best bet.
Speaker 1:So, based on our four interviews with you, or opportunities to have you come in and speak to us, my daughter's building a house.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:She's supposed to get a CO on like the 29th of December. I suggested maybe she should get that CO on like January 2nd or January 3rd. Was I doing anything wrong to her on this, or how would you look at that, mike?
Speaker 3:Well, the statute reads substantially complete.
Speaker 1:Oh, it says not CO. It doesn't say CO.
Speaker 3:Oh, so she might as well go ahead and move in early, Well so you know, if, if she wasn't substantially complete, she would be treated as land for 2025. However, if she's deemed substantially complete, it's going to go on the roll.
Speaker 1:So it has nothing to do with the CEO. It has to do with live there.
Speaker 3:We use that as a baseline but sometimes it's right there, it's like, well, I didn't, I haven't. You know, we still have another coat of paint on this one wall. Or you know, this or that Gotcha, we haven't put the shrubs in out front.
Speaker 1:Okay, gotcha, so I can help her move on the 29th or 28th.
Speaker 3:So the good thing about that is she can apply for Homestead for 2025. Yeah, yeah, which, otherwise she would have to wait, and then you're subject to what the market does.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and delay in building your cap Right.
Speaker 2:Okay, the market does yeah yeah, and delay and build in your cap, right? So okay, and so in 2025 I think we just passed, uh, an increase in, um, well, what is that?
Speaker 3:the adjustment, and yeah, talk about that. That's a good window. Yeah, so that was. I believe that was amendment five.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think five and annual inflation adjustment right, right.
Speaker 3:So a lot of people don't realize that fifty thousand dollar homestead exemption that we, that we have on our properties, is broken into two $25,000 bans. The first one applies zero to 25 against all millages of your assessed value. The second one applies from 50 to $75,000 of assessed value. Believe it or not, we still have a lot of properties, especially old senior condos, and owners have been in for a long time. They still don't break the full 75. So they don't even get the full 50,000 of homestead.
Speaker 1:So they're mad that it's not kicking in right at 26,000. Right.
Speaker 3:So what this will do? Now this that second band applies to all millages except schools. So you're in most cases depending on your tax district. Schools can be as much as a third of your tax bill. So that piece is not exempt in that second band. So what this new amendment that was passed does is it allows that second 25 to grow so that exemption can increase over time based on the consumer price index. Okay, so that exemption can increase over time based on the consumer price index. So the same CPI that we use for Homestead, for the 3% cap or CPI, whichever is less. Well, in the case of this you'll use that CPI. So if it were 5%, that $25,000 would be multiplied by 1.05 and would grow by that much, and then it would be cumulative each year. Okay, it could continue to grow. So while it will start off fairly nominal, over time it can at least have you guys run some projections on it.
Speaker 1:You think that what the average you know we're talking average homes now is 400 grand, so everybody's going to get you know, a large percentage is going to get that second exemption and now it would have been going to be small.
Speaker 3:It's going to be, you know. You know I could probably take you to lunch, probably not dinner, ok, lunch.
Speaker 1:So maybe we should have passed this like four years ago, when we were having double digit inflation. Right, right OK.
Speaker 3:Yes, and there were different flavors of adjustments to how Homestead would inflate. Senator Brandis actually had one that would have tied to the home price index and that would have allowed it to move at a much greater clip, but that one we couldn't get that one through.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I get this is not a political show, but I get a little cringy when you know the increases in values we've had. And I still see some counties and municipalities pushing for tax increases and I know you hear a lot about that but you have no authority over it whatsoever. But you know they should be able to self-fund pretty well what happened in the values in the last three to four years I would think.
Speaker 3:Well, yeah, I've been a proponent of. I love if a taxing authority can seriously consider rolling back, even if not fully, at least partially, to allow people to enjoy the equity in their homes and the rise in value and not necessarily have to pay additional taxes on it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I would think we could do that. Do you ever see save our homes being sunsetted at all? No, no, it's with us forever.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there was no sunset provision in in law for it. And when 64% just in Pinellas, 64% of your homeowners are homesteaded, it would have to go to a constitutional amendment that would need a 60% vote to overturn it, so it's never going to happen. I can do that simple math in my head and I don't think it's going to work.
Speaker 1:All right, let's crack back on. What about you seeing in the condominiums? I live in? This condo unit that's been damaged. How's the 50% rule being applied there?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So that's a little tricky. It's not by the unit and if you go on our FEMA letter and look at it we quickly state that you can't really use it for this because we're valuing a unit and we don't do a cost approach. We don't break out a separate land area, so we're not getting down to a structure value Plus. Fema requires that 50% to be of the entire building, not just your respective unit.
Speaker 3:Okay, because obviously if there's damage it's really about that building and that structure and whether it's safe. Now that actually helps a lot of condominium owners because the ones that were impacted are generally the older pre-firm at-grade built prior to 75, and only the first floors were impacted in most cases. So the value from the rest of the building helps buoy them up. Even if they were almost a complete loss, they still may be able to repair those and come back. So one thing we're doing there is we are trying to incorporate that building valuation into our FEMA letter as well. So that is something we're working on at present and hope to be able to put out there pretty soon.
Speaker 1:These are, I think. A lot of times people think oh, you know, Mike Twitty, my property appraiser, you guys do mass appraisals and you work on mass numbers. So when there's a homeowner out there that thinks, well, he doesn't know, I have granite countertops and that I just redid my bathroom. So that's where we have to keep in mind of what's going on here and a lot of people.
Speaker 3:they get fearful even with our building value reconsideration process or they get an outside appraisal. They're worried that their taxes are going to go up if we see those things. And that's not the case. If they have a homestead exemption in place and everything was done within those four walls, as long as they didn't change a sub area, like turn a garage into a living space, then there's really not going to be any change. It'll change their just value, but not their assessed value. Their assessed value is still their cap, so it protects that and it actually helps them in the long haul because it increases their portability.
Speaker 2:Makes sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely so. Is there any other things we need to know about exemptions? While we talked quickly about exemptions, what would be your quick, handy word about letting the people out there know what they? I know that they need to be own and occupy on January 1st. Yes, okay. And they have until March to file it, technically even a little longer, correct?
Speaker 3:yeah, so for homestead, march one is, the is the deadline, and but we um, but we typically will grant late files as well up until mid-September, oh wow, and then we have to draw that line in the sand, gotcha.
Speaker 1:You don't like to tell everybody that, do you?
Speaker 3:Well, yeah, we really like them to be in earlier, because that way the taxing authorities know what they're dealing with when they're setting their millage rates and things like that, so it's very helpful to have that done. If everybody did it at the end it would be a nightmare. Oh, I'm sure. Yeah, yeah, so we really need them to get those in there early.
Speaker 1:So when we were, too, talking about the appraisals of a neighborhood and stuff you guys take if I'm reading this right here you take the complete data of like a neighborhood, so you're not looking at individual homes. When you're, you take an area and that say, okay, we saw a 2% or 3% or 5% whatever it was increase and that's how you factor it into the mass appraisal.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, it's, it's going. We're looking at hundreds of sales that might affect one particular model, that's modeling a series of neighborhoods and that is running through our cost system and our sales comparison approach modeling system. So they kind of work together. But yeah, it truly is mass. And but yeah, it's a, it's, it truly is mass. So it's using statistical analysis with that, with regression and and determining what the best fit is, what the appropriate adjustments are for size, for you know, for land area, for quality condition, all those types of things.
Speaker 1:All the unique data points that come with that property, all that's factored in. Do you have and I know that you speak to a lot of realtor groups and different associations around the county all the time Do you have any projections of what you think home values may do? Or am I getting you out of your lane here a little bit?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, that's some thin ice to tread on right now and, to be honest, I haven't even really been tracking the sales the same way I normally do, just because of all the hurricane response and all the new processes and everything that we've been in the weeds on. So I've been kind of wanting to let all the dust settle, let all the sales get in through the end of the fourth quarter, be able to analyze all that data and then, as we move into the first quarter, we'll be looking at that to see, because we got to arrive at that January 1 snapshot in time of value.
Speaker 3:But we know there's going to be some distress sales in the marketplace. We know activity and transaction count has gone way down from where it was. Now there's talk about some interest rate changes, you know. So there's all these factors going on. So we have to kind of wait and see and let all that data come in. So I'm not trying to, you know, put the cart before the horse and I'm analyzing I need to, I'll really be analyzing potential impacts in our certain taxing jurisdictions. You know the beach towns.
Speaker 3:Obviously, and what their potential impacts may be, because they may have some downward taxable value for 2025 as they move through the recovery. But they still had a lot of homeowners that had assessed values with caps in place that were actually below land value. So, depending on what happens with sales, if some people move on, those could reset. That could help buoy up the jurisdiction some.
Speaker 1:So I know your head's been buried in this calamity that you got dumped in your lap and, like you said, since you've been in office every year, you've been dealing with something in your predecessor. Yeah, I'm wondering if I'm bad luck or something. Do you have a rough number on the transactions thing, the downward number of transactions that turn hands? I know that's something more that we look at from the real estate business. Do you guys at the county level have a rough idea of the lower number of transactions this year?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think it's. I'm trying to remember, I'm kind of shooting.
Speaker 1:I'll help you out while you're thinking here. Yeah, the national picture and I would imagine that you probably may mirror them, the national picture, I think has it off about 20% to 25%, isn't it Amir? Yeah, so what happened was we had this big spike in transactions, especially here in Florida during COVID. Our numbers, our volume, transaction volume, was way up and then in third, fourth quarter of 22, it's been steadily going down. So I could tell you, internally, over the 24, 30-month period, we're off about 50% in number of transactions. So logic tells me that that's just pent up. It's going to get back in the middle somewhere it's going to come back.
Speaker 2:I mean, you know you talk about nationally it's. You know, on average, 4 million sales you know happen per year and I think we're sitting just over three at the moment. And so you know quarter percent. You know 30% down it's or, yeah, quarter percent down a lot of homes. Yeah so there's going to be some pent up demand in the in the years coming.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I can. I can throw out a couple of numbers here. So this is single family transactions only. You know we peaked in 2021 with almost 17,000 single family homes sold, with almost 17,000 single-family homes sold. In 22, we dropped to 12,500. And then in 23, we dropped to about 11,000. And through third quarter of this, year we were at 5,500.
Speaker 1:Ouch, that just puts it right in perspective. So I like to tell all the realtors listening congratulations, you're a survivor.
Speaker 3:You still made it.
Speaker 1:You're still in the business, but median sale price is up. That's the good news, man. I remember in 2008, you know, the market was so bad and we thought, well, it can't get any worse. And then 2009 came, and you know, well, you know, we'll figure out something here, we'll do some short sales or something, and we'll make it through to 2010. Then 2010 came and at one point in time we didn't think another piece of real estate was going to sell. That's it. It's locked up. You know, nobody's buying. Things will come back. We know that, we all know that. So you're at 50, we're.
Speaker 1:Pinellas County is at 5,500 transactions through the third quarter Single family Single family yeah, yeah, and so 55, and if we put another 25% on that, we hope to be at about 7,000, 7,000.
Speaker 2:8,000.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 7,000, 7,000, something like that. So that's got us off about the law of large numbers. I look at you know law of large numbers. I look at you know we're a large brokerage.
Speaker 3:We mimic what happens over there at the pro and that makes sense, because we were at 11 000 last year. So so.
Speaker 1:So we're all there, all right. So I need to talk to you something about, really, really, uh, I think, important, uh near and dear to me back uh, 10, 15, 10, 15 years ago, when I was drinking a lot of sodas, I used to like Code Red. So I'm looking to see if I can find me any Code Red For those of you guys listening. That's Mike's band. I think it's still your band, you guys still together with the Code Red band. Uh-oh.
Speaker 3:Maybe, maybe not.
Speaker 1:Oh, this just happens with bands, so I know the first time I had to catch up behind the music episode. So I know the first year I brought you on you were telling me that you guys were just about to go do a show down at Ferg's. Well, is Ferg's even still there? I don't think their cash cow, tropica in a field, is there anymore. So I don't know. Man, you guys got any gigs coming up, you doing anything fun out there?
Speaker 3:I know this is a January thing, so we haven't really booked anything for 2025.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 3:So we're still kind of taking the holiday season off and regrouping.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:I got a couple of little private things, but that's usually with just in a duo format with a drummer friend or or one of my sons okay, that's cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's cool out there. All right. So that was a political speak for the. You know they're working on relationships with the band I get it. I know how bands work, all right. So final thoughts. Mike, what do you get wrapping up here? What do you got to up here? What do you got to?
Speaker 3:tell the folks. Just again, want to. You know, let people know, make sure to reach out to us Any, any questions. You know, within our lane and our lane is fairly wide we can, you know. But please don't don't ask building department questions and we don't have surveys. A lot of people think we're the keepers of surveys for some reason we do. Really we do not have those, uh. But you know we can handle parcel splits and combines and you know we do do the mapping county-wide, um, but when we do do split, splits and combines, it still needs to pass legal muster with the jurisdiction. So you, you, we don't want to be creating non-conforming lots.
Speaker 3:Say it was a split and now your lots don't mean minimum lot size. Yeah, there was deed restrictions in there or something that said it had to be 60 foot of width, right. So part of our duty is to not create land that has no value, so we don't want to do that I can't access it from this road.
Speaker 1:That doesn't do us any good, does it to collect those taxes.
Speaker 3:So we get some of those kind of requests. But our main functions are obviously to value every parcel each and every year, whether it's real estate or tangible personal property, which is mostly your business equipment. So that's about 450,000 parcels and then we administer all those exemptions. So it is exemption time here in the first quarter of the year up to that March 1. So we encourage people, if they want an exemptions checkup, tune into our public ed session. That a link to be to attend virtually and we'll have a bunch of exemption specialists on and. But if they come in person it's really good because then before or after the session you can actually sit with someone and actually review exemptions you have or exemptions you may not even realize you qualify for and you may learn about through the session and then be able to apply for those.
Speaker 3:That's pretty cool, so that could be, you know, widow, widower, disability, you know like veterans exemptions, those types of things, and you know there there can be some savings there for people low income, senior, those types of things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know this show. As you know, you're at the Charles Ruttenberg Realty Office. Here Our listenership is realtors. Realtors what a great way to reach out to your customer base and remind them about their exemptions and get them in front of this, be able to speak a little bit knowledgeable, intelligent about it, enough to point them towards Mike's site at least and if they were interested in that meeting, just. But they just find it on the website.
Speaker 3:Yes, We'll post it on the website. We've got a whole, a whole section Once. Once we're ready to put that up live, it'll be there and they can register for it.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 3:And I want to encourage your listeners and especially your realtors, you know follow us on social media. We have a Facebook site and we deliver a lot of that stuff very timely, and it's a great way to have those additional touches with your clients and gives you an opportunity to stay in contact with them but give them some very valuable information that's very timely. We also have e-newsletters that are also very timely, that people can subscribe to. We have one just for real estate professionals, and then we have one for property owners and then we have another one for business owners just go to your site and subscribe.
Speaker 1:That's right and that's great content for you guys too I'm always looking for those touch points.
Speaker 2:Yeah, putting out a newsletter specifically for realtors so good stuff facebook, any other social.
Speaker 1:They should follow you at mike uh, just just facebook is where we are right now.
Speaker 3:We also have a YouTube channel, so all of our sessions that for public ed get posted to our YouTube channel as well so they can go back and look at that archive over the last several years. So great information there about tenancy. You know people talking about putting their property in a trust. We have an in-house attorney. He does a great session on in the weeds with deeds.
Speaker 1:Don't trust yourself out of your homestead. Guys, Be careful.
Speaker 3:There's a lot of pitfalls you can fall into. We always encourage people if they're setting up a trust and they're going to put their homestead in it, have us vet the trust document, you know. Look at the language in there before.
Speaker 1:That is such a valuable tool that you provide folks, because most I don't want to say most, but there's a lot of estate attorneys that kind of get the language wrong and they you know the beneficial ownership clause that's in there have Mike's attorney take a look and make sure your paperwork is fine.
Speaker 3:Yeah yeah, our exemptions director is also our in-house attorney, so it's perfect.
Speaker 1:So he's reviewing it Nice.
Speaker 3:We have that uniqueness that allows us to do that, Because normally we wouldn't. You know, we can't provide legal advice and all those types of things, but he's sitting right there and he's the one that can approve those.
Speaker 1:I'm an attorney and I can tell you that this exemption is not going to fly.
Speaker 2:So I I like that Amir you got any closing thoughts? You know, mike, as I mentioned before, I think you're doing a great job in office and you know your website that you unveiled was phenomenal. You know it helps me in my business every day. You know the tax estimator that you have on there great tool and I think you know a lot of realtors who don't know about it should know about it, and inclusive of lenders, too, should know about that. Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Who don't know about it should know about it, and inclusive of lenders too, should know about that. Yeah, absolutely yeah. We all know about those calls that come in.
Speaker 2:But you know just, I really appreciate you being here today. Thank you so much.
Speaker 3:I appreciate you guys having me.
Speaker 1:We do. We appreciate you All right guys. With that, we will wrap it up for this week's edition of Real Estate Disruptors. Thanks,