AS a previous poster stated these Bonds are considered speculative and NOT rated...however that said we bought CDD #5 and CDD #7 Bonds with interst rates paying between 5.35% to 6.5% tax free. These bonds are 30 year bonds BUT they all have call features put into them at the 10 year mark at PAR. The other peculiar thing about these bonds is that they have a Sinking Fund Provision...and what that means is that as we as homeowners pay off your individual bond on your property, the CDD has the right, through a lottery drawing, to redeem at PAR in $5K increments part of your bond holdings.
You are required to buy a minimun of $10K in bonds but what that means if your bond is selected in this lottery you can have these bonds redeemed (at PAR) in part or in their entirity through the sinking fund...so the income stream you may be expecting through this purchase can change.
if your intentions are to buy some of these bonds, best approach would be to buy a ladder of these bonds.......the income is very goood.
You cannot buy these bonds from anyone..i know when we first saw the ads in the local Village Sun newpaper, I tried calling Fidelity, T Rowe Price and others to see if I could buy form them directly. Even talked to the T ROWE PRICE BOND desk in Tampa Fl ..they could not get them. Eventually we found a good broker with FMS BONDS in Miami and they have been very good.......even tranfered the bonds after purchase to whatever brokerage account you want. BY the way they get their supply of bonds through inter-dealer purcahses and specialize in buying bonds through estate liquidation. In other words you typicaly are not buying new issues. The only problem with this is that the Sinking Fund can kick in sooner and call provision rather than 10 years away when newly issued may be 7 or 8 (or whatever). I will still take (hopefully) 7-8 years of tax free money at 5-6% .
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