PEMBROKE PARK — Many homeowners in two mobile home parks could face a doubling or even a tripling of property tax bills following a Broward County Circuit Court decision on Tuesday.
Residents of Dale Village and Park Lakes Estates had sought an injunction to keep the Broward County Appraiser’s Office from assessing their cooperative parks as individual lots rather than as a whole.
A change in state law allows owners of mobile homes in cooperatives to be taxed differently than renters. Dale Village and Park Lakes, on Hallandale Beach Boulevard, are the only two mobile home parks in Broward run as cooperatives.
“I’m sure the judge did what he had to do, but I’m disappointed,” said Wilson Deschesnes, manager of Dale Village. “If taxes were to go up 200 percent for all residents in the county, there would be such a general protest. But because we are a very small number of owners, we don’t have the same number of voices and we become victims of the system.”
The residents of the two parks typically paid $200 to $400 a year in taxes. They now could pay as much as $800 a year.
In a similar case involving a Sarasota cooperative mobile home park, Judge Stephen Booher ruled that owning stock in a mobile home park is the same thing as owning real estate.
The decision could mean still higher property tax bills for many part-time residents of the two parks who live in Canada and the Northeast half the year and cannot qualify for a homestead exemption.
Many of the residents of Dale Village and Park Lakes have filed administrative petitions with the Property Appraiser’s Adjustment Board, said Gaylord Wood, counsel to the Property Appraiser’s Office.
These residents will have the opportunity at hearings in January to show whether the market value of their cooperative parcels are less than the value shown by the appraiser’s office, he said.
Residents of the two mobile home parks, who have 30 days to make a decision, are not yet sure whether they will appeal, said Harry Swann, their attorney.
