By 2025, the city of Boynton Beach will need 10,800 affordable housing units, according to a new study by Florida International University’s Metropolitan Center.

Today there are only 50 in Boynton Beach, and the gap between wages and the cost of South Florida real estate, despite the market’s downturn, is still too wide for many to afford a home.

Officials today will discuss a proposed ordinance aimed at creating units of affordable housing by allowing developers to build more units per acre, if they offer some at prices families can afford.

Now, The Preserve, a 180-townhouse and condo project developed by Coral Gables-based Cornerstone Group, is the only project offering affordable housing, giving residents a chance to make affordable Florida mortgage payments.

“If we don’t do this, then Boynton won’t really be able to keep pace,” said Vivian Brooks, the Community Redevelopment Agency’s planning director. “It is becoming a detriment to our future economic health.”

• Developers asking the city for higher zoning density would be required to set aside 10-20 percent of the development for affordable housing.
• The ordinance would require the units to remain qualified under affordable housing guidelines for at least 30 years.
• Affordability would be ensured through deed restrictions and liens.

Prospective home buyers whose income does not exceed 120 percent of Palm Beach County’s median household income would become eligible to buy the affordable homes. For a family of four, income would be capped at $77,280.

In November, Palm Beach County commissioners approved an affordable housing ordinance requiring most new developments to price 16.5 percent of the homes between $164,000-304,000.

The city’s proposed ordinance must first make it past the city’s planning and development board and the Community Redevelopment Agency before being approved by city commissioners.

Despite Florida mortgage loan rates remaining relatively steady, housing is out of reach for many in Boynton Beach. To address this growing problem, the city is focusing on two areas for affordable housing.

In December, commissioners approved an amendment to the city’s plan to allow a density of up to 20 units per acre for affordable housing along Woolbright Road between Interstate 95 and the Florida East Coast Railway.

The density in the city’s downtown area, within the CRA district, allows up to 80 units per acre. The areas that allow higher densities are prime spots for affordable housing since land is scarce in the city and the population is growing, which only magnifies the affordable housing problem.

A small city needs two things to jack up housing demand:

1. More people
2. Wealthier people.

Unlike most of the rest of the Sunshine State, Panama City hasn’t really attracted either, mainly because it’s isolated way out on the panhandle in West Florida. It’s even in the Central Time Zone.

Nevertheless, Panama City is poised to host big airliners in its regional airport, as well as a lot more visitors - and a lot more buyers now that Palm Beach County and other such locales have gotten so expensive. In fact, Panama City is #1 on CNN Money’s list of America’s Top 10 Cities to Buy Now.

Take a look at these gaudy stats below. Your Florida mortgage will go a lot farther up north than in traditional hot spots in South Florida - and your home is projected to increase a staggering 72 percent in value between last year and 2011.

Median home price
2006: $223,000
2011: $383,000

Population
2006: 166,000
2011: 187,000

Per capita income
2006: $31,000
2011: $40,200

State and local governments and a top regional developer, St. Joe Co., are planning a new airport by 2008 at a cost of more than $300 million.

Locals expect the facility to open up the North Florida housing market the way Southwest Florida International Airport in Fort Myers helped drive that region’s boom in the 1980s.

“Panama City is an economy waiting to break out,” says Steven Cochrane, chief regional economist for Moody’s Economy.com. Other factors increasing demand: Property prices are still low by Florida standards, and the local market has already absorbed a price correction after peaking last year.

Janet Roan, one of many optimistic real estate agents in Panama City, notes that two-bedroom beachfront condos are going for as little as $330,000 - down by more than $100,000 from 2005.

There’s no question that those priced out of the housing market in much of the southern half of the state would be advised to consider this move. A Florida home mortgage can still be obtained for cheap, and the entire area is poised to appreciate like mad.

The red flags? Local politicians, notoriously cozy when it comes to local home builders, have green-lighted several master-plan communities for future development. If supply gets out of hand, prices will stall.

Trying to get a read on how much the Florida housing market is slumping? You may be looking at the wrong indicator.

As the National Association of Realtors (NAR) tracks sales of both single-family homes and condos, the prices of Florida condos may be more relevant to market direction than the prices of houses.

In the third quarter of 2005, NAR stats for single-family homes show that prices fell 1.2 percent from a year earlier, with 30 percent of markets showing declines.

Latest home prices

Condo prices not only dropped more steeply, 2.1 percent, but 46 percent of markets showed declines.

Which gives a truer picture? Adam Koval, a former investment banker who now runs SocketSite.com, which covers San Francisco’s real estate market, insists condos are the way to go.

“Look at the same building six or eight months after the first sales were made,” he says. “The prices then will be a pretty good indicator of what’s going on.”

The reason: It’s an apples-to-apples comparison. With condos, there’s, “no adding floor space or big improvements,” says Koval. If you see a price change, it’s usually pure appreciation - or depreciation.

Contrast that with single-family house stats.

NAR prices, for example, do not account for the differences - especially the improvements - in homes. New houses, for example, have grown much larger, to an average of about 2,400 square feet from 1,500 in 1970.

To be more accurate, you’d have to see what the same houses sell for at different times, in order to determine South Florida housing prices accurately. An index constructed by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) index does compare same-home sales, but it doesn’t account for investment in that home, such as a big remodeling project.

Other shortcomings: The OFHEO data doesn’t do a good job capturing luxury home sales, because they track only transactions with conforming Florida home loans, which are limited to $417,000 for most of the nation. And it does capture values listed in refinancings, which are based only on appraisals.

Why condo prices are so useful

Chief economist for the Mortgage Bankers Association, Doug Duncan, says there are several reasons why condo prices are more accurate.

“A smaller percentage of people who own condos occupy them; many are bought as second homes and for investment purposes,” he says. “There’s less friction in that market; it’s more liquid.”

More condo sellers react to market changes and act quicker than owners of single family homes, who tend to hang onto property in the face of lower prices.

Single-family house owners act like buy-and-hold value stock investors, riding out market peaks and valleys. They sell when they go through a life change - raising a family, retiring or moving for a new job, for example. Otherwise, they remain in place for the duration of their Florida mortgage.

Condo owners act more like growth stock investors, who bet on the hottest companies and trade in and out of stocks much more often, reacting to what they perceive is happening in the market.

In looking back over the historical data of when the national housing market peaked, Duncan pinpointed July 2005 as the top. He also found it was the first month in four years that condo price appreciation was less than that of existing single-family houses.

Why are home prices in Broward County and other areas dropping? It may have a lot to do with the glut of homes for sale in most of the country.

Such an inventory means buyers should have plenty of choices and lots of bargaining power in the spring selling season - typically the busiest time of the year.

Many builders and Florida mortgage brokers, for their part, hope the housing market will start recovering this year as buyers respond to price cuts and other sweeteners offered by increasingly nervous sellers. In some markets, agents say, buyer traffic has picked up in the last month or two.

But any recovery is likely to be gradual. Donald Tomnitz, chief executive officer of D.R. Horton Inc., a home builder, told investors this week that the market, which began slumping in 2005, may bottom out by mid-2007, but that “we don’t see any rapid improvement thereafter.”

Given all that, sellers should expect buyers to take their time and be tougher negotiators.

David Lee, who recently moved to Wenham, Mass., to take up a post as an associate professor of physics at Gordon College, has rented a home for his family and says they plan to be “quite picky and choosy” as they look for a home to buy. Dr. Lee doesn’t feel any pressure to decide quickly because he figures housing prices won’t rise in the near term and could fall further.

A quarterly survey of housing conditions in 28 major metropolitan areas by The Wall Street Journal showed that the inventory of unsold homes at the end of 2006 was up substantially in nearly all of the markets from the already plentiful level of a year earlier. The biggest increases were in the metro areas of:

- Miami-Fort Lauderdale
- Orlando
- Tampa
- Jacksonville
- Phoenix

The survey also includes recent pricing trends - nearly all negative - based on surveys of real estate agents by Banc of America Securities in New York, a unit of Bank of America Corp., as well as data on late Florida mortgage loan payments and job-creation prospects from Moody’s Economy.com, a research firm in West Chester, Pa.

In Miami-Dade, the number of existing condos on the market is enough to last 27 months at the current sales rate, says Jack McCabe, a real estate consultant in Deerfield Beach, Fla. The oversupply will grow, he says, as about 8,000 condos are expected to be completed this year and 12,000 in 2008.

“It’s going to get bloody down here,” Mr. McCabe says.

He estimates that Florida condo prices in Miami-Dade fell between 8% and 10% last year and will drop 20% in 2007. Eventually, he predicts, hedge funds and other investors will step in to buy surplus condos in bulk at huge discounts.

When Jim Cahlin, a broker for Cushman & Wakefield, looks at commercial real estate in South Florida, he’s starting to see New York.

“We’re getting closer and closer to rental rates in major metropolitan markets,” he said.

At the end of 2006, the average rental rate for luxury downtown office space in Palm Beach County was $40.69 a square foot, up from $36.42 at year-end 2005, according to a Cushman report. Broward County’s rental rate for comparable digs was $31.08 a square foot, up from $29.29.

Rents in the Big Apple and other large cities are north of $50. Why are South Florida landlords charging so much? Because they can.

The high cost of construction is really limiting the number of new office buildings in Palm Beach and Broward counties, and the landlords have to pay the Florida mortgage somehow.

What’s more, a rash of record building sales is driving up operating expenses. Broward and Palm Beach property taxes are reassessed when buildings sell, just like houses, forcing owners to pay more. They, in turn, pass their increased costs on to the tenants.

Palm Beach County’s office vacancy rate dropped to 11.3 percent at year-end 2006 from 13.7 percent at year-end 2005, according to Cushman’s report. Broward’s rate dipped to 11.7 percent from 12.9 percent.

And if you think that’s tight, check out the region’s industrial markets, where vacancies are below 5 percent.

“I’ve been here 20 years, and I haven’t seen the industrial market in the condition it’s in today,” Cahlin said.

The bulk of Palm Beach County office leases last year were in Boca Raton, which had 1.71 million square feet of deals. Most of Broward County’s office leasing during 2006 occurred in Cypress Creek. New and expanded leases there totaled more than 730,000 square feet.

NAI Merin Hunter Codman, Palm Beach County’s largest commercial real estate brokerage, handled more than $327 million in sales and leases last year, a record for the firm. It’s planning to do more work in Broward in 2007.

Chairman Neil Merin said landlords eventually will find they can’t keep passing on higher costs because tenants won’t be able to afford them. He did say South Florida will remain attractive to institutional investors because of the growth here and a lack of land for development.

“There is tons and tons of [investment] money,” Merin said. “Blame the baby boomers.”

Stephen Bartlett is trying to sell a three-bedroom house with a new roof and kitchen and other upgrades. He’s asking $265,000 and recently decided to give the buyer’s real estate agents a 10 percent commission.

“I’ve already had more people call me on that property in the last weeks than I had in the last year,” Bartlett said.

Bartlett, a real estate agent, is portfolio manager for CT Capital, a Fort Lauderdale lender and investor. CT Capital acquired the Lauderhill property through foreclosure and is pricing it below fair market value, he said.

A standard commission is 6 percent, with the buyer’s agent and seller’s agent each pocketing 3 percent.

But given how slow the South Florida housing market is, area sellers should prepare to make huge concessions on price and commission, lest they want the properties to sit unsold for months, he said.

“I think this is going to be the norm from now on,” Bartlett said.

Many sellers have tried to attract the attention of agents in this soft market by offering large commissions, bonuses, cruises, a certain period free of Florida home mortgage payments, and other perks. Some agents, in turn, share those perks with their clients.

But Debbie Anderson of Prudential Florida WCI Realty in Coral Springs and other agents say they doubt 10 percent commission will become more common.

West Calhoun, the new president of the Home Builders Association of West Florida, is a Pensacola native who started out in the construction trade working summers for local contractors. He took the time to answer questions about the housing market and his plans for his year-long term with the Pensacola News-Journal. Here’s the interview:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Q: What are the biggest challenges facing home builders in 2007, and what are they doing as a group to address them?

A: There are many, including property insurance, growth management, affordable housing, workers’ compensation, construction education and environmental permitting, just to name a few. Each of these issues are complex but equally important for the overall success of the housing market.

For instance, builders must have property casualty insurance coverage in order to build homes - Florida mortgage lenders require coverage for construction loans. This coverage must be available and affordable in order to do business.

As for growth management, local and state governments regulate residential development and home building through a myriad of rules and regulations designed to protect current residents, the environment, and the health and safety of new home buyers.

Q: Will 2007’s home building numbers approach those of pre-Ivan? And are you envisioning 2007 as a “comeback” year?

A: I am optimistic about the future. I cannot say whether or not this will be a comeback year, but I do believe that homes have been selling in our market if they are priced right.

Lately there have been a lot of calls and usually sales follow calls, so I am hopeful that people will take advantage of the market right now, because it’s still a good time to buy a home.

Q: Is the supply of labor sufficient to meet home builder needs during 2007?

A: Finding skilled labor is always tough in some cases, but I would say that builders are finding that the subcontractor labor force is able and willing to work.

To help meet Florida’s need for a more qualified workforce, the Home Builders Association of West Florida is pleased that Navarre High School has started a Future Builders of America program that is educating high-school students with important skills and industry knowledge.

Q: Do you see the use of incentives as more or less important in stimulating home sales going forward?

A: Incentives are good, but sometimes people will wait take a wait-and-see approach before buying. They will shop one builder to see what incentives and then go to another builder, and so on.

At the end of the day, the buyer is afraid to buy because they don’t want the feeling that they missed out on a better deal. It is human nature to get the best deal possible on their Florida mortgage loan and on the house itself.

I would encourage anyone to make an educated decision. However, it could cause paralysis by analysis, if you will, in the market.

Q: What effect have the crises involving insurance and property taxes had on new home sales?

A: Taxes and insurance definitely affect home sales by increasing the monthly Florida home mortgage payment. Hopefully the folks up in Tallahassee have made some positive changes recently that will lower insurance costs.

Q: What are your goals as 2007 president of the association?

A: I am proud of the work the HBA has done to keep our members informed, and frankly, keep them in business. We are proud of our governmental affairs program that continues to work to provide safe, affordable housing and the opportunity for home ownership for people in our community.

Regulatory fees are hard costs that are passed along to the buyer. The unintended consequence is that, because of the cumulative affect of each regulation, the price increases, thus reducing the affordability of homes.

Population growth and building permits aren’t the only record-breaking statistics in Flagler County.

The number of lis pendens, or recorded notices of pending litigation relating to real estate, rose 89.7 percent to 575 in 2006 in the fastest-growing county in the nation, according to information provided by the Real Estate Strategy Center of North Florida Inc.

“It’s a statistic that gets your attention, and I think it certainly should,” said Rogers Towers attorney Bob Cuff, who lives and works in Flagler County. “It certainly reflects a downturn in the residential real estate market.”

Lis pendens are filed for a number of real estate-related lawsuits, the most notable of which is to begin the foreclosure process. They are also filed to recoup delinquent homeowner association dues and for construction liens.

Cuff cautioned against putting too much emphasis on a single percentage, particularly in a county that has experienced a tremendous amount of population growth - 108.4 percent from 1990 to 2006.

“The total number is still significant, but relatively small,” he said, particularly when compared with neighboring counties.

In St. Johns County, 620 lis pendens were filed last year, which was a 35.9 percent increase over 2005. Clay County had 898 filed, a 3.9 percent jump, while Duval County had 5,086, a 3 percent jump on its Florida mortgage holders.

Still, of the lis pendens filed in Flagler County last year, 83 percent were for foreclosures, according to data provided by the Flagler County Clerk of the Circuit Court.

Ray Rodriguez, president of the Real Estate Strategy Center, said many of the foreclosure lis pendens were probably filed on out-of-state investors who bought vacant quarter-acre lots in the core growth area, Palm Coast, and when the market softened simply stopped paying the mortgage.

“I hope it’s vacant land,” Rodriguez said, “because if it’s homes, it’s a whole different story.”

It could take months, and in some cases years, for a Florida mortgage loan lis pendens to result in a foreclosure, and the defendant has until three days after the foreclosure auction to pay the debt back in full to retrieve his or her property. But the fact that so many mortgage-related lis pendens were filed last year, coupled with the 28.7 percent jump in the number of tenant evictions from 2005 to 2006, concerns some county officials.

“I wouldn’t have predicted that this was going to happen,” said Flagler County Clerk of the Court Gail Wadsworth, adding that she had predicted a 20 percent increase in cases in 2006, but her office has been significantly more busy.

Many of those residents who have been foreclosed upon or evicted relied on the county’s once booming residential construction industry for income, Wadsworth said. A bevy of unaffordable housing costs has also contributed to the problem.

“That’s a gut reaction,” Wadsworth said of her conclusion based on the number of construction-related businesses that have closed in the county. “Can I prove it? No, not at all.”

The county’s per capita income is $22,674, according to the Cornerstone Regional Development Partnership, a seven-county economic development agency that includes Flagler County.

Local Realtor Nate McLaughlin of McLaughlin Realty said part of the problem is skyrocketing home prices in Jacksonville. The median price of a home in Flagler County increased from $138,000 in 2003 to $252,250 in 2006, according to Gotoby.com LLC. The Flagler County Association of Realtors reported that the average price went from $189,200 to $324,000.

As a Realtor, McLaughlin said, he wants prices to increase, but as a concerned resident, he knows that the community cannot sustain that increase.

“I’m a big proponent of Palm Coast, I love Palm Coast,” said McLaughlin, who is also the chairman of the city’s Planning and Land Development Regulation Board. “What really needs to happen is that the buyers are just going to have to say no to these properties.”

The Broward County housing market showed slight improvement at the end of 2006, giving some hope that the worst of the yearlong slump might be over.

The median price of an existing home last month was $367,600, only a slight drop from the $369,000 in December 2005, the Florida Association of Realtors said Thursday. There were 618 sales, a 7 percent drop from 666 in December 2005.

While certainly not stellar, those figures are better than what many people had expected after demand for Florida home loans remained slow throughout the year and prices started dropping in the summer and continued through the fall.

West Palm Beach housing analyst Brad Hunter said he sees a glimmer of hope for frustrated sellers.

“We’re not out of the woods yet,” he said. “But we’re starting to see some signs of a return to equilibrium very slowly.”

Mike Larson, an analyst with Weiss Research in Jupiter, isn’t as optimistic.

Florida mortgage rates are creeping up, and he expects the inventory of homes to rise as frustrated sellers who took their properties off the market late last year try again this spring.

“Sellers shouldn’t expect sunshine and roses in 2007,” Larson said. “If you’re a buyer, I expect you’ll be in the driver’s seat, and you should negotiate like it.”

Analysts agree that it will take months to sell all the properties on the market. Broward now has 35,362 homes and condominiums for sale, more than double the number from this time last year, according to Keyes Co. Realtors.

For 2006, the median price for an existing home in Broward was $367,800, up 2 percent or $6,700 from 2005’s $361,100. The median means half the homes sold for more, half for less.

Sales fell 26 percent last year, putting the county in the middle of the pack with other metropolitan areas statewide. The condo market remained uncertain as sales for the year declined sharply but prices rose.

After a five-year boom, Broward’s housing market faded last year, as short-term investors left the market. Sellers who were accustomed to multiple full-price offers and fast deals waited weeks or months just for someone to look at their homes.

Sellers resorted to offering cars, cruises, bonuses and other perks to buyers and their agents, often to no avail. Some desperate sellers held auctions, while others inquired about swapping homes.

Sherrie Nemetz of Plantation has been trying to sell her four-bedroom home for nearly a year. She finally fielded her first offer, and it was for more than $100,000 less than the $449,900 listing price.

She has reduced the price and switched agents. Her next goal: trying to improve how the house shows on the Internet.

“There are just so many houses on the market,” Nemetz said. “If your house isn’t marketed correctly, there’s no incentive for people to look at it.”

But Mike Pappas, president of Keyes, said he expects sales to pick up as buyers try to beat looming interest-rate hikes.

A troubled Florida housing market may slow down the state’s economy, but it won’t deter the Sunshine State’s biggest bank from expanding its market share, says the St. Petersburg Times.

“We want to widen our lead,” said Ken Thompson, chairman, president and CEO of Wachovia Corp.

The exec was in the Tampa Bay area Tuesday and Wednesday to meet with local business leaders. Those hoping for a rebound in local real estate didn’t hear much encouragement from Thompson or the bank’s economist Mark Vitner.

“We don’t think we’ve seen the bottom yet. But we do see the correction happening faster than in the past,” Thompson said.

While plenty of local banks are beginning to report problems with Florida mortgage loans, he said that shouldn’t be an issue for Wachovia.

“I don’t think there will be a credit problem. But it will be a volume problem with fewer new loans being written,” he said.

Wachovia just spent $24-billion to buy Golden West Financial Corp., giving it a much bigger presence in Florida mortgage lending. Thompson scoffed at the suggestion that the purchase might be bad timing, given current market dynamics.

“The timing was just right. We just passed 300 million people in the U.S. last year, and in the next 30 years, the country will have amassed 400 million people. That by itself tells me that the mortgage business is going to be a great business.”

Wachovia’s acquisition of Golden West, which included subsidiary World Savings Bank, pushed Wachovia past Bank of America as Florida’s largest bank with a 19.9 percent market share.

Thompson said World Savings will disappear next year as it is consolidated with Wachovia. That might be bad news for baby boomers and Tampa Bay area retirees, who have grown to love World Savings’ high CD rates. But Thompson promised that his company going to be assertive on CD pricing.

Wachovia will consider additional, smaller acquisitions that look like a good fit, but the company isn’t looking to acquire any major Florida home loan providers at this time, Thompson said.

He said Wachovia will continue to expand its investment banking services and its brokerage, which now makes it the third-largest U.S. broker. The bank ranks fourth-largest nationally.

Banking’s future will bring more consolidation, pressure for efficiency, globalization and competition with nonfinancial companies, Thompson said. Wachovia may eventually take its bank overseas, providing services such as asset management and brokerage.

Randy Aube of Boca Raton would like to move to the Broward County housing market, but he’s afraid he can’t afford the taxes.

He pays $4,300 a year in property taxes on the home he has lived in for six years. If he moves and buys a place of similar value, he thinks the taxes will skyrocket to $14,000.

“My next-door neighbor, who bought his house a few years after I did, is paying about twice as much [as I am],” Aube wrote in a recent letter to state Rep. Adam Hasner, R-Delray Beach. “That just doesn’t make any sense. I know [property taxes are] a huge complicated problem, but if it doesn’t get fixed, it’s only going to get worse.”

South Florida homeowners angry about high tax bills — and the threat of paying even more if they move — can sound off to legislators, Democrat and Republican alike, at meetings on the topic early next month. Eight town-hall-style hearings will be held across the state, including hearings in Lake Worth, Fort Lauderdale and Miami.

Legislators have set the stage for a big debate at the legislative session scheduled to start in March.

Gov. Charlie Crist and many legislators want to trim the taxes people pay on their homes. They are talking about a constitutional amendment that legislators would write and voters could approve as early as this summer. The proposal would double the current $25,000 homestead exemption, which lowers the assessed value of a home. Under the existing exemption, the owner of a $200,000 house pays property tax on $175,000 of that value.

The Republican governor also wants to let homeowners take some or all of their so-called “Save Our Homes” tax savings if they move. That 24-year-old constitutional provision caps tax increases at 3 percent a year no matter how much the value of a home increases. But those savings are lost when a homeowner moves, and the cap doesn’t apply to businesses, rental properties and vacation homes.

This month, Crist and legislators enacted changes to drastically cut property insurance rates. But property tax cuts might be a bigger fight.

Local government officials say tax cuts of any significance will siphon money from everything from local parks to the salaries of police officers, firefighters and teachers.

Lauderdale Lakes Finance Director Larry Tibbs is among those who are worried. He says if homeowners’ homestead exemptions are doubled, his city would lose $1 million a year.

“To make up that difference,” Tibbs said, his city “would have to raise the [tax] rate.”

Crist wants local governments, which have expanded their budgets until the last year or two with a booming real estate market, to spend less. How else will anyone wish to apply for a Florida home loan in the area?

“They are going to have to have a little more discipline at the local level to help the people,” he said.

Many Republican legislators are joining the call for spending cuts by cities and counties. They say total taxes levied at the local level climbed from $16.6 billion in 2001 to $30.4 billion last year, an 83 percent increase that outpaced the 12 percent population growth in the same period.

“Florida doesn’t have a revenue problem,” said Sen. Mike Haridopolous, an Indialantic Republican who leads the Senate’s Finance and Tax Committee. “We have a spending problem.”

Palm Beach housing market resident Larry Zalkin agrees it’s time for the state to slash property taxes, even if it means tightening city and county budgets.

“This is the ideal time to fix the situation,” said Zalkin, who serves on a county advisory board. “The surpluses are there. This might be the time to start sharing [budget surpluses] with the public.”

The property tax debate is only getting started. State leaders say everything is on the table, even though House Speaker Marco Rubio insists any tax cuts be across the board and be melded with stiff spending caps for cities, counties and school districts.

“[Property tax cuts] have to help the owner of the apartment building, so that hopefully they’ll pass it through to their tenant,” said Rubio, a West Miami Republican. “It also has to help the owner of the laundromat or the dry-cleaning store at the corner.”

Property tax changes like those Crist is backing appeal to Eileen Rennick, a widow who moved to Century Village in Deerfield Beach in 1999. She became accustomed to paying $104 a year in taxes on a one-bedroom condominium. But two years ago, when she moved across the street into a two-bedroom condo, Florida mortgage loan payments weren’t the only problem - her taxes increased to $1,040 a year.

“It’s outrageous,” Rennick said. “If I had known, I wouldn’t have [moved].”