An insight into the buying / closing costs of owning a Florida Villa

Most Florida Villa vacation rental owners will likely tell you that it’s a field of roses, skipping from rental to rental, bookings galore, and without any problems at all.  In this series of blog posts I intend to highlight all the costs involved with owning a vacation rental in Tuscan Ridge, so that you know all the expected costs if you are deciding whether to go into the vacation rental business.

Closing costs

Buying a house isn’t that expensive in the USA, especially not in Polk County, Florida.  Most of the costs either come from signing up to a new Home Owners Association (HOA) who look after the community upkeep, or from paying taxes and other costs part way through a year where the current owners have already paid for the full year – such as yearly taxes.  In Tuscan Ridge there are 2 HOAs to pay – a master and a sub.  Our bill for closing towards the end of December was broken down as follows:

• County taxes – paid until the end of the period (known as Real Estate taxes)
• Non Ad Valorem taxes – paid until the end of the period (non ad valorem taxes are not based on the value of your house – such as the fire service)
• Assessments (HOA) – paid until the end of the current period
• Sub Assessments (HOA) – paid until the end of the current period
• Closing fee paid to the legal people ($250)
• Recording fee ($10)
• HOA initiation fee ($100)
• HOA transfer fee ($75)
• HOA sub initiation fee ($75)
• HOA sub transfer fee ($75)

Depending on the time of the year the above could vary wildly.  We also had to pay the 2013 HOA fees.  It also depends on the HOA you are signing up to for your community.  Tuscan Ridge is much lower than some other community fees because the owners are responsible for lawn care and some maintenance themselves.

Here’s a link to Polk County Taxes: http://www.polktaxes.com/

And HOAs explained: http://www.wisegeek.org/what-is-a-homeowners-association.htm

So that’s the easy bit explained – whereby most of the costs are incurred by the owners of the property rather than the buyers.  The only extra cost is a survey which costs around $500 for a 4 bedroom property with a pool.  We recommend getting this done if you don’t know much about construction and buildings in the USA.