Crossroads at Kelly Park

Most communities have one assessment story. This one has three running at once, and they are all in the district's own adopted budget, which almost nobody reads.

In the first phase, the 315 lots whose land development is finished, the total for the coming year is about $2,078 to $2,487 depending on lot width, built from roughly $827 of operations plus a debt line. It arrives on your November property tax bill, where it qualifies for the early-payment discount like everything else on that bill.

In the second phase the total is about $1,953 to $2,305, from roughly $777 of operations plus debt. But it is billed directly by the district rather than collected on the tax roll. Two consequences follow. There is no early-payment discount. And, far more importantly, an off-roll assessment does not appear on the property tax estimate a buyer is normally shown. You can be handed a perfectly accurate tax estimate for a home here and still be two thousand dollars a year short on the real carrying cost.

Then the third story, and it is the one to be most careful about. About 201 units sit outside the current assessment area and pay operations only, roughly $148 a year, with no debt line at all. That looks like a bargain and it is not one. The offering document states plainly that additional bonds are expected for those lots. When they issue, that $148 steps up toward what the built phases already pay. Anyone pricing a monthly payment off today's figure for a future-phase lot is going to be wrong by roughly two thousand dollars a year.

On who decides all of this, the developer's own offering document is admirably direct. Of five board seats, three are seated and two are vacant, and all three seated supervisors are described as employees of, or affiliated with, the landowner and developer. That is normal for a district this young, when there are not yet enough resident electors to fill a board, and it is not an accusation. It is simply worth knowing that the body setting your assessment is developer-controlled for now.

One figure we will not give you, because the district's own documents disagree. The offering document told investors that operations ran about $580 a unit. The adopted budget for the coming year sets it at roughly $827 on the tax roll and $777 off it, which is about forty-three per cent higher in roughly two years. It may simply be the clubhouse coming online. We did not verify the cause, so we publish the adopted budget figures and flag the gap rather than pick one.

So ask five things in writing before you contract: which assessment area and phase your specific lot sits in; whether your assessment is collected on the tax roll or billed directly; whether bonds have been issued against your lot yet and what the assessment becomes if they have not; the district's most recent audited financial statements and adopted budget; and whether your address falls inside the city's separate street lighting assessment.

Representation is free and the timing is the catch, as above. It is worth more than usual here for a specific reason: two national builders sell under this one community name, in different phases, with different annual costs and different landowners behind them. That means there is a genuine comparison to run inside the same gates, and running it properly means knowing which phase and which assessment area each home sits in before you compare a single price.

The other thing worth having read to you is the paperwork, because the numbers that will actually govern your monthly payment here live in a district budget and a bond offering document rather than on a spec sheet. Whether your assessment is on the tax roll or billed separately, whether bonds have issued against your lot, and what the street lighting assessment does are all knowable and none of them is volunteered.

Three things we will not claim. We did not obtain the district's audited financial statements, only its adopted budget and a preliminary bond document, so the bond maturity is genuinely unknown to us and we publish none. We could not read the overlay code, so nothing here describes what it may require of you as an owner. And we did not search Florida regulatory enforcement records or civil dockets for either builder, so read the absence of any such note as unchecked, not clean. If that matters to you, ask and we will have it pulled properly rather than repeat a rumour.

The rest is the same everywhere and it is not complicated: hire your own independent inspector at pre-drywall, again at final walkthrough, and once more before the one-year warranty expires. Read the limited warranty booklet before you sign rather than after. And read what the purchase agreement says about completion timing, price changes before closing, and dispute resolution.

Subdiview is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by D.R. Horton, any homebuilder, any developer of Crossroads, the City of Apopka, or Orange County. The builder is identified here because it is a builder of this community, which is a statement of fact and not a representation of any relationship. Community names and marks are the property of their respective owners and are used for identification only. Subdiview is operated by a real estate broker licensed in Illinois. We are not your agent, we do not represent you, and we perform no real estate brokerage services in this state. No one at Subdiview is licensed in this state. If you join an interest list, your information is referred to a real estate professional licensed in the state where the property is located, who will contact you directly. We are compensated by that professional's brokerage, not by you. Pricing, plans, inventory, district, tax and approval details on this page carry the dates shown, are as published, proposed or reported rather than committed, and are subject to change without notice.