Governor Talks About Florida Housing Market

Gov. Charlie Crist spoke at the Forum Club of the Palm Beaches last night, and on his list of things to talk about where the usual suspects:

• The troubled Florida mortgage market
• The slumping residential housing market
• The swirling, tangled property tax problem
• Skyrocketing homeowner’s insurance rates

It’s not easy being the Sunshine State’s leading executive these days, but the salesman-in-chief is unfazed by the daunting tasks ahead.

Here are some highlights from his speech Monday:

On homeowners’ insurance rates: “Insurance rates will continue to fall … These other homeowner’s insurance companies would tell us if we can’t raise our rates, we’re leaving the state… But it’s a new day. Citizens Property Insurance can compete. So if these other companies come to us and say, ‘You’re not letting us have our rates be high enough we’re leaving.’ You know we’ll tell them what will hit them on the backside on the way out.”

On property taxes and the real estate market: Crist said that when the new legislative special session convenes June 12, property taxes will “drop like a rock.” “People aren’t selling their homes now because they don’t want to take a tax hit and lose their 3 percent cap.”

“The residential housing market as of late has cooled a bit, in great part because property taxes and insurance are so high… It’s a double whammy of issues that have been pulling back this economic engine we call Florida. As soon as these things change, we won’t have a boom in Florida. We will have a sonic boom.”

You have to hand it to Crist for his optimism, as a cloud of bad credit Florida mortgage problems, tax inequities and insurance hikes looms over our great state.

If he can pull off the supposed sonic boom, he’ll see a boom in the polls akin to what South Florida mortgage demand saw from 2001-2005.