Preston Trigg lecture

Preston Trigg, Director of Administration and Special Projects for the Hillsborough County Tax Collector (take a breath; he said long titles in government are supposedly a good thing), visited the class today to talk about what reporters should look for within the tax collector's system.

He said that the state of Florida decided to make everything a public record then just write exemption laws to protect citizens’ privacy.  He even dedicated a slide to his quite helpful powerpoint presentation to tell exactly what a public record is.

“All documents, maps, books, tapes, photographs, films, recordings, software… regardless of physical form… make or received pursuant to law or in connection with transaction of official business.”  --Florida statutes Section 119.011 (11)

But specifically within the tax collector’s office, reporters can find property tax, business tax, and motor vehicle (to an extent because of the Driver Privacy Protection Act of 1994) records.  Anyone who owns a property, business or a motor vehicle can show up on the tax collector’s website.

One topic Trigg stressed the most was the property taxes.  He told us reporters can find so much about a person just through the person’s property tax records.  Property tax records include transaction records that contain the amount the person bought it for, sold it for, whom they sold to or bought from, title transfers, whether they paid their property taxes, and how late their payments were.

Near the economic downturn, reporters opened the doors to several real estate fraud cases all because of public property tax records.  Neal Mohammed Husani and Micheal Tringali, two of the more notorious property flip scammers were busted after being exposed from tax records.

This article from the Sarasota Herald-Tribune is a great example of the true power of using tax records to uncover some shady deals going on with property.

Trigg also showed an example of what a person’s property tax information looks like on the hillstax.org website.  The most important things that show up are whether or not the owner has paid the taxes on that property, the assessed value and the just value of the property.

The assessed value is the amount the tax collector charges taxes on and the just value is the actual value of the property.  These two values should be the same in normal cases.  Usually when the values are different, something fishy is going on.  It can either be a piece of property used in a property flip scam, or there is an environmental issue with that property.

The property appraiser is the person in charge of judging values of property each year. 

Trigg said one way people try to get away with property flip scam is to try to get the appraiser to say a property is worth more than what it really is.  If the appraiser agrees to lie about it, he or she could be in for some serious trouble if caught, which the likelihood is obviously great, since it’s all public record.

Property is probably the most expensive thing to buy in a person’s life.  When people started to see that it’s profitable to buy a house and sell it for more (because it’s so damn expensive), people wanted in on the business.  When it started getting out of control (when the scams started running rampant), that’s when the economy started to fall. 

Trigg’s lecture wasn’t just great for reporters, it would be good for any homeowners, past, present or future. 
These records should be seen before buying a home.  With real estate being so low now, people are starting to get the hint that once the economy starts improving, real estate value will increase. 

This information would be extremely helpful for not just journalism students, but for anyone interested in buying a home.  Not many people have enough cash to buy a home.  It’s usually an investment over many many years.  So before making that investment, do the research.  It’s always worth it and it’s only a few clicks away.