Okaloosa County Property Appraiser has the responsibility for identifying, locating, and fairly valuing all property, both real and personal, within Okaloosa county for tax purposes. There is a thing called “just value” or “market value” of the real property that is based on the current real estate market. Estimating the market value of your property can be described as discovering the price most people would pay for your property in the current condition.
The most important thing to take a note is that the Okaloosa County Property Appraiser does not create the value. Everyone is able to establish the value by buying and selling the real estate in the market place. Okaloosa County Property Appraiser has the legal responsibility to study every transaction and appraise your property accordingly.
Beside all the things mentioned in the previous paragraph, Okaloosa County Property Appraiser also tracks the ownership changes, maintains the maps of parcel boundaries, keeps the descriptions of the buildings and property characteristics up to date, accepts and approves the applications from every individual eligible for exemptions and the other forms of property tax relief, analyzes the trends in the sales prices, construction costs, and rents to best estimate the value of all property that can be assessable.
Does Okaloosa County Property Appraiser levy or collect taxes? The answer to the question is no. Okaloosa County Property Appraiser assessed all proeprty in Okaloosa County and is either the taxing authority nor tax collector. Okaloosa County Property Appraiser is not related to the amount of taxes levied or collected. There are three separate government entities, every of them having the unique and distinct roles, produces your November tax bill. The first one is the Okaloosa County Property Appraiser annually appraises all property in Okaloosa County at the market value as of January 1. The second one is each taxing authority within Okaloosa County sets their own millage rate based on the amount of tax dollars necessary to fund the annual budget. The third one is the tax collector takes the amount of taxes due in order to bill and collect all taxes levied within the county.
How is the property appraised? Okaloosa County Property Appraiser will visit and inspect each property at least once every five years. However, you have to know that the individual property value may be adjusted between visits in light of sales activity or the other factors affecting the real estate values in your neighborhood. In the real estate market, sales of similar properties are strong indicators of value.
In order to estimate the value of a certain property, Okaloosa County Property Appraiser will identify the properties that have sold, their sale price and the terms and conditions of every sale. Every transaction has to be studied to make sure that it is the arms length transaction. A thing called the arm length transaction is the sale involving the willing seller and the willing buyer without any undue pressure or the special incentives. Aside from that, it also can mean that the property was on the market for either the excessive nor short period of time.
