Record at Broward County Property Appraiser’s office may differ from the City's Record

I have an upcoming scheduled meeting with the Planning Department & Code Enforcement within the City of Hollywood to address a discrepancy that affects the Broward County 40 year building recertification process. In this meeting I'll review their procedures relating to inequities created when there is a difference in unit count between Broward County Property Appraiser’s office and the City of Hollywood. 

At the transfer of an investment, many properties will need to undergo the process of a Broward County 40 year building recertification. For those of you who do not know, the number of units reported on Broward County Property Appraiser’s office may differ from what the City of Hollywood has on record. At the point of a 40 year recertification this creates two problems for multi-family investment property owners in Hollywood.

First Problem: As a buyer, you could overpay for an investment property.

Since it may be unclear what the legal number of units is for a listed property, you could be paying too high a price for the subject property.

Second Problem: The city of Hollywood could cite a property for an illegal conversion or work completed without a permit.

Even if you purchased a property and have not touched it since, if the number of units the city shows is less than what Broward County has on record, your property could be sited for an illegal conversion. An illegal conversion citation could result in substantial out-of-pocket costs to cure the citation.

To be clear, this citation would arise ONLY because of the discrepancy that exists between the records held in Broward County and the records held by the City of Hollywood, not because of actual alterations made on the property.

Middle-core investment property owners must be aware of this unique situation in play in Hollywood, Florida, and (potentially) in surrounding cities as well. It underscores the need to carefully and forensically engage in research before the divestment of your asset or the purchase of a new property.

I and my firm, Media Realty are advocates for multi-family investment property owners so I'll be going directly to the City of Hollywood Planning Department and Code Enforcement office to address this inequity. We, the middle core community must respond to this burden that is not of our making. 

Please share your thoughts on solving this big problem for middle core property investors moving forward. If you've run into this code problem in the sale of your multi-family property, please contact me or share your experience in the comments below.

*To learn the results of this meeting, view my update article.