this post was submitted on 15 May 2025
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A Boring Dystopia
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Yeah some serious boomer logic going on here.
"We thought that if we kept the foundation and the outer walls of the house and we just took the roof off, it was our understanding that we were going to preserve our Save Our Homes and our homestead,” says Debbie."
"the renovations—removing the roof, adding a second floor —ultimately triggered a full reassessment of the home’s value. Under Florida law, once a property is deemed substantially improved, it can be treated as new construction, removing the protections that had capped the home’s assessed value for years."
They tried to apply the building code laws. In Florida, if you do a renovation and keep the foundation and one wall, you can build to the code at the time of construction. These "protections" never applied to assessment and tax.
Many houses in that exact area have been bought for cheap and flipped using this work around. They end up with a modern house but can avoid having to spend extra for upgraded storm mitigation, plumbing, and electric.
Yeah that's the same rule up here in Jersey. You can use it to maintain a structure that goes against the current building codes (say the ordinance makes it so you can have as much, you still can). To think that a tax collector wouldn't be like "Hey, there's an extra 1500 square feet, two bedrooms, and another bathroom on this house" is foolish though. And you presumably pulled permits for it all and put it right on their radar.
The way to do it is piecemeal over several decades. Nobody is none the wiser.
Can't imagine adding a floor piecemeal.