Harborview Property Management · Property Managers · Miami, FL
Harborview Property Management cut tenant tax pass-throughs by $622,000 a year and filed every petition inside the 25-day window
A South Florida manager of office and retail buildings used rent roll data from Yardi Voyager to petition the Value Adjustment Board on 19 of 27 properties. The petitions cut combined annual taxes by $684,000, of which about $622,000 reached tenants through lower NNN billbacks.
- 19 of 27
- Properties petitioned to the Value Adjustment Board after triage
- $684,000
- Combined annual tax reduction across the 19 petitions
- $622,000
- Lower tenant NNN billbacks, at 91% average recoverable occupancy
- 19 of 19
- Petitions filed inside the 25-day window after the TRIM notice mailing
The challenge
Harborview bills real estate taxes to tenants as a pro-rata pass-through, so every August TRIM notice sets the number its tenants will argue about in the next CAM reconciliation. A Florida owner has 25 days from the date the property appraiser mails the notice to file a petition with the Value Adjustment Board (Form DR-486, plus the per-parcel filing fee the county sets), and the property managers handled that deadline alongside budgets and lease administration.
Florida adds a wrinkle that makes triage important. Just value is the market standard, but non-homestead assessments rise no more than 10% a year under the nonresidential assessment limitation, so an assessed value can sit well below just value for years. A petition that wins a reduction in just value saves nothing if the capped assessment is already lower. Harborview had been filing on gut feel and could not show tenants why it chose some properties and not others.
“When we send a reconciliation, the tax line now comes with the petition, the evidence and the outcome. Tenants stopped disputing it.”
The approach
Harborview imports each building's rent roll and operating statement from Yardi Voyager and runs the TRIM notice through Assessment Audit, which compares just value with the capped assessed value as well as with the income and sales indications. Eight of the 27 properties showed a capped assessment already below the value Harborview could support, so no petition was filed for them. The other 19 went forward.
Income Valuation normalized each income statement and capitalized it at the submarket rate, Sales Comps adjusted verified sales of office and retail buildings for the factors in Fla. Stat. §193.011, and Petition Generator completed Form DR-486 and the evidence exhibit for Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties. Deadline Tracker counted down the 25-day window and the special magistrate hearing dates, and all 19 petitions were filed on time. Together they cut annual taxes by $684,000. At 91% average recoverable occupancy, about $622,000 of that went to tenants as lower NNN billbacks and about $62,000 stayed with ownership for the vacant space.
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