Silly me, I always thought that housing developers paid impact fees because they significantly change property they own plus tie into utility services provided by the town/city/county. A basic explanation but you get the point. Now, in the case of housing, the impact of these connections to a city/town/county is extremely significant which could lead one to believe that the impact fees would be fairly high. However, it has been published in a number of articles that the developer received a fairly large discount on the impact fees they paid. In fact, it was considerably less than the standard fees paid by other developers for housing projects throughout, at least, central Florida. Is the developer happy? Of course. His bottom line jumped up for each house he built. Is the home buyer happy? Not when their taxes went up 25% in one year to cover........... what? Road improvements? Budget deficits? Poor local government management, that's what. The bottom line for the developer increased with the help of local government and the people.............. hey, buyer beware. Perhaps it's time for people to wake up. Your bottom line is being impacted.......... what are you going to do about it?
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