Angeline

It is a large master-planned community in unincorporated Pasco County, between the parkway and the highway south of the state road, built by Lennar. Two community development districts sit over it. The newer one covers about 2,227 acres and is planned for about 3,000 homes, of which 600 are inside its current bonded assessment area. An older district covers the western portion and carries about 2,153 units across five separate assessment areas. Homes are closing: the newer district's own budget records operations and debt assessments actually received from lot closings during the year. One thing to fix straight away, because it appears everywhere: the figure of about 6,200 homes that circulates for this community appears in no primary document we could obtain. The documented numbers are about 3,000 and about 2,153.

Because of who has handed over the landscaping, and it is the single most important thing on this page. The district splits its annual operations assessment into two parts. General and debt administration is charged to every unit. A second part, covering the landscape contracts, streetpole lighting, irrigation and pond maintenance, is charged only to the units whose common areas have actually been conveyed to the district. In the current bonded area that is 185 units out of 600. The other 415 sit in the budget under a heading that reads, in the district's own words, undeveloped lands with a limited benefit allocation, and they pay the first part only. So two identical 60-foot lots, in the same district, carrying the same bond and the same debt assessment of about $2,074, are assessed about $5,603 and about $2,585 a year. The gap of about $3,018 is exactly the second component. And it is not a permanent discount: when a phase's landscape and ponds are turned over, the charge attaches. The sister district here, which is further along, shows the same structure with undeveloped rates running about 85 per cent below developed ones, and its developed lots moved only about one per cent year over year. So the volatility is in the handover event, not in inflation.

Yes, and this is the search trap that will catch almost everyone. One district carries this community's name and has about $12.7 million of bonds over 600 units. The other governs roughly two-thirds of the bonded homes here, across five assessment areas and about 2,153 units, and carries about $78.65 million, and its name contains no reference to this community at all. Combined, that is about $91.4 million of district debt across about 2,753 homes. A buyer who searches this community's name will find the smaller, newer and considerably more expensive district and will never see the other one. The practical consequence is a same-product comparison worth running: a 60-foot lot is about $4,434 a year in the older district, about $5,603 in the newer one where common areas have been handed over, and about $2,585 in the newer one where they have not. Three prices, one community, one product type. Ask which district and which assessment area a specific home sits in before you compare anything.

About 38 per cent of one district's entire annual budget, under an agreement that runs for one fiscal year. The adopted budget carries a revenue line for a physical environment deficit of about $423,000 net against total revenue of about $1.12 million, and a footnote stating that the developer will enter an operations deficit funding agreement to cover shortfalls for that year. The figures reconcile exactly against the expenditure side, so this is not an estimate. What matters is what happens if it is not renewed, and nothing obligates renewal. Our own arithmetic on the district's numbers, which is arithmetic rather than an adopted figure, is that spreading that amount across only the units currently carrying the physical environment charge would add roughly $2,255 a year each, taking a 50-foot lot from about $4,696 to about $6,951 and a developed 60-foot lot from about $5,603 to about $8,309. Spread across every unit in the district instead it would be about $808 each. Ask whether the agreement has been renewed for the year you will actually own the house.

Possibly, and the mapping is old enough that the answer deserves care. We ran a 56-point grid across the community footprint and about half the points, 29 of 56, returned a special flood hazard area, mostly the numbered kind with a mapped base flood elevation and some unnumbered. The base flood elevations returned ranged from about 52 to about 73 feet, which are inland ponding elevations in the uplands here and have nothing to do with storm surge. Here is the part that matters more than the split. The panels are all effective in 2014, and they were drawn over what the district's own petition calls two parcels of unimproved real property, before any of this community's fill or stormwater system existed. We then checked whether that mapping has been revised, and it has not: querying the federal map revision layer over an area larger than the community returns exactly two effective revisions and neither is inside the community's boundary. So a lender-ordered flood determination will hit twelve-year-old mapping of raw pasture. That is a real and checkable cost exposure. Pull the current determination for the specific lot, and ask whether a revision has been applied for.

Yes, decisively, but not for the reason most people give. Unincorporated Pasco County with fire totals about 16.82 mills. The county's six cities run from about 17.28 to about 23.03, so every one of them is more expensive. The mechanism is worth knowing because it is unusual. In four of those six cities the county's fire services levy of about 2.12 mills is still charged on top; incorporating does not buy you out of it, and the city millage is purely additive. Only two cities displace that fire levy, and they charge three to four times the millage they displace to do it. So the honest statement is that unincorporated is cheaper here, but not because unincorporated residents avoid a municipal fire charge. They pay it either way in most of the county. One more thing worth stating plainly: the mailing address on this community names a place that has no municipal government and levies nothing at all. It is a postal and census name, not a city.