Hi everyone. This is Lance Mohr your Tampa Bay Realtor in this video I want
to talk about CDD fees. What are CDD fees? What do you need to know about them?
What don't you need to know about them? CDD fees are probably the most
misunderstood and probably complicated type of fees in real estate
they're very confusing for a lot of people not just home buyers but real
winners as well so if you're looking at buying a home in its within thirty years
of age so if it's a newer home you really need to watch this video and know
what's CDD fees are know how they work and understand the whole process of it
and that's what I'm going to talk about in this video
all right so I've been meaning to do this video for quite a while now cddp is
simply an acronym for Community Development District and they get a
really bad rap a lot of people don't understand them and I get a lot of calls
from buyers and they they'll say I don't want to be in an area where there's CDD
fees I don't want that so you know what I want to do is I want to explain how
they work and what they're for so let's start off and go over building
home when a developer goes out there and they develop the land they're going to
have to put in the streets the sidewalks the curbs the gutters they're gonna have
to move water around and put in retention ponds and actually put in
drainage system so they drain between retention ponds so there's no flooding
and the different retention ponds are gonna have to do a whole bunch of stuff
you'll put in the utilities just a whole bunch of stuff out there now they could
go get a loan and do that or they could get a bond so what what a bond is it you
don't just pay for everything so what happens if they get a loan they're gonna
they're gonna pass everything on to the to the builders and of course it's going
to be higher a higher amount of money for the land then the builders are going
to simply pass that cost on to the buyer but if they get a bond what they're
doing is they're taking out a bond then usually the bond is for 30 years and
they're passing that on to the on to the builders now the the builders will pass
the bond on to the buyers so generally the bigger homes in the larger loss will
be a little higher in CDD fees than the smaller lot so let's say you go out to
develop in and there's 50-foot blocks and 60-foot Lots that the builders
selling well the bond is going to be higher on the 50 foot or the 60 foot bot
than it will be in the 50 foot so you need to understand that now in the CDD
fee you have the bond that's one portion of the cddp the other portion is
the maintenance because these grounds have to be maintained remember two years
ago you probably never heard of a CDD fee and any time you went into subdivision
there was a golfcourse subdivision the HOAs they were always a lot higher and
the reason is is because the maintenance if you're in the community that has a
lot of amenities that has a lot of and not just amenities but let's say let's
say it has a lot of walkways maybe boardwalks it might have a lot of trees
a lot of retention ponds a lot of open land that's going to be a lot more
expensive and it's gonna have to be maintained so let's say for an example
you have a CDD fee and it's $1,600 a year now first off the
CDD fee is in the property tax bill please remember this this is very very
confusing for a lot of people because they think it's outside no it's in your
property tax bill if you go onto the website of the appraiser of the County
Tax Collector you're gonna see it's gonna be in there and it's going to say
something like calm death so just know and understand that the other thing I
want to tell you is CDD fees are collecting in October up front so if you close a
home say we're in May right now the builders gonna have to prorate until
the day of closing because it's good it's paid up front unlike that rest of
the taxes are all paid in the rear so just understand that but let's say your
CDD fee is $1,600 a year and you have a CDD fee $1,600 so let's say $800 of it would
be the bond and that's for 30 years it's the bond this for 30 years not
necessarily the CDD fee so your bond is for 30 years and it's $800 and
then you have your maintenance and the maintenance is $800 a year so that's
$1,600 then over here you have your homeowners association and what's say
your homeowners association is $700 and it's a really big community
and there's a lot of amenities in the community all right that's sort of
normal but let's say you you go out you're talking to a builder you're
talking to your realtor you're looking to buy and whether it's a pre-owned home
or a new home and let's say the the CDD feeis $1,600 in the HOA fee is $80 a
year and there's a lot of amenities in there so there's the pool, the tennis
courts, playgrounds, etc well you know you can't sustain that at $80 a year for all
the homeowners so what a lot of the a lot of the developers did is they took
they took the part of the HOA and they put it in the CDD fee so now you're
gonna have the bond the maintenance in part of the homeowners association I
don't know why they do that and they do it on some but not other ones so it's
important when you're looking at the CDD fee to always ask and get some
information on the HOA see what the HOA is so example there's subdivisions out
there where the CDD is twenty one hundred dollars a year in a golf course
community with the golf course, the Country Club, the lazy river pool, six
Lane Olympic pool, tennis courts, playgrounds, basketball courts, volleyball
courts, etc and the homeowners association is $80 a year well you know
that's not the case you know it's in the CDD fees so if you're looking at buying
a brand-new home try to get this information from the Builder rep if
you're buying a pre-owned home you could go in and I'm just gonna give you an
example in Hillsborough County you go to Hills tax org you look up the property
you click on the one on the bill so you pick whatever bill you want learn we're
in 2018 so let's say you look at the 2017 bill and you see on there and pull
it up it comes up in a PDF just go down to work says Com Dev it
will have the phone number and what the what the tax is you could call that
phone number and get more information on the CDD fee so you know what's in there
how it works when the bond expires if you're building a new home you're going
to need to ask the sales rep now a lot of sales reps may not know this so you
might want to give them a couple days give them time to find out because they
most people don't ask them these questions but it's really good to know
how CDD fees work and you know what you're into how long's the bond now I
say this because when you go to smaller communities example a builder is built
about building homes and there's maybe 70 homes or maybe there's a hundred and
eighty homes the developer probably didn't take out a bond you know they're
probably not going to have the CDD fee so you're gonna have in the homeowners
association assuming it's going to be in the homeowners association you're going
to have the maintenance of the grounds in that homeowners association so you
just need to ask the questions generally almost specifically out here in the
Tampa Bay area when it's a big development several hundred homes or
certainly thousand homes there's pretty much always going to be a cddb so at the
end of the day whether you have a CDD fee or whether you don't have a CDD fee you're
paying one way or another example my CDD fee in the home I women now give you an
example this is it was um the home was built in 2004 the developer took out the
CDD in 1998 it was a 20-year bond back then now a lot of them are 30-year bonds
so mine expires in 2018 and it's a 20-year bond and my CDD fees are my
bond is I call them up is about $600 a year my CDD fee is $1,100 a year but
the bonds about 600 a year so if they didn't have a CDD fee
then the $12,000 different $600 times 20 years would be just added into the price
so you're gonna pay coming or going so don't let the CDDfees confuse
you if you have any questions ask the Builder rep go on to the wherever you're
at whether you're in Pinellas, Pasco, Hiilsborough or wherever you're at and
pull up the tax record look on the tax bill I should say the tax bill look on
there and call the phone number that's it if you have any questions about
buying a home in the Tampa Bay area don't hesitate to give me a call I would
love to talk to you I would love to help you
I hope these videos are helpful and I wish you the best of luck whether you're
buying home or whether you're selling home have a great day
you.