How to Calculate Special Assessments

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Whats a topic sure to be on your real estate license exams? Special assessments!
Join us as we cover how to calculate different types of special assessments and help you prepare for your Florida Real Estate License exam.
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What's a topic sure to be on your real estate license exams? Special assessments! It can be a shocker if you are not ready with it, but we are making prep questions for you which you can practice.  If you are fond of math this will be easy-peasy for you, and if math is not part of your arsenal list. No worries! We are going to make it as simple as possible for you.

Today, we are going to focus on paving/repaving a road that is owned by the city/country.

From this type of assessment, we are going to solve how much will be the property owner’s share of the pavement/repavement cost. Usually the type of lots differs in this problem and we are going to cover those; interior lot, corner lot, interior lot with 2 dimensions given. Aside from this, we are going to share how you can easily solve this with a simple formula that you can use across all given types of lot.

Interior lot

“City/County will be making a pavement assessment and will share 30% from the $50 per square foot pavement cost. Your real estate professional will then calculate how much will be your pavement cost share for your 200 linear foot frontage of your interior lot”

From this problem, the first thing that you will need to do is to get the figures that were stated. Which are; City/County’s % share, pavement cost per square foot, property owner’s frontage linear foot measurement.  These given data will be the same data that you wanted to get from the 3 lot types that we are going to cover today, so be sure to take note of these.

Once you figured out the data that you wanted to take note of, then let’s go ahead and reveal the formula for the calculation.

First, you wanted to get the total pavement cost, which is = (frontage-linear-foot-measurement * cost-per-square-foot ). This will give you the total pavement cost of the entire pavement area across your property’s frontage.

Second, you will then want to know what the lot owners share of the cost by taking off the City/County’s share from the pavement cost. Which will be, = [ total-pavement-cost * (100% - city-or-county’s-share) ]. 

Third, we are going to calculate your share from the total pavement cost that you are responsible to make/pay. Which will be calculated by, =( owner’s-share / 2 ). You might be asking, why should it be divided by 2? The answer to that is simple, you are just going to share what is the square foot area that your frontage covers from the 2 way pavement road that is being assessed, the other part of the pavement lot will be covered by the property across your frontage area. 

Perfect! Now that we know how it works and what are the data that you need to get, then let’s apply it into action by solving the #1 assessment.

First, total pavement cost:
( 200 linear foot * $50/sqft. ) = $10,000

Second, total owners’ share:
[ $10,000 * (100%-30%) ] = x

[ $10,000 * (70%) ] = $7,000

Third, property owner share / your share:

( $7,000 / 2 ) = $3,500

Awesome! We safely assume that your client’s total pavement/repavement cost share will be $3,500.

Corner Lot

“City/County will be making a pavement assessment and will share 30% from the $50 per square foot pavement cost. Your real estate professional will then calculate how much will be your pavement cost share for your 200 x 100 linear foot frontage of your corner lot”

There we go! We are now talking about the corner lot, which you have given 2 dimensions, which is 200x100. Take note that the first figure of this dimension will be your frontage (200) and the latter (100) will be your depth. Once you figure that out, we are going to have the same formula that we are going to use to calculate this, the only difference is, since we are now talking two sides of the pavement road that you want to calculate then, you will add these 2 dimensions together and that will be your total linear foot (200 ft + 100 ft). 

Let’s go straight to the calculation:

First, total pavement cost:

[ ( 200ft +100ft )* $50/sqft. ] = x

[ 300ft * $50/sqft. ] = $15,000

Second, total owners’ share:
[ $15,000 * (100%-30%) ] = x

[ $15,000 * (70%) ] = $10,500

Third, property owner share / your share:

( $10,500 / 2 ) = $5,250

Fairly easy right? Just like what we mention, as long as you can make sure you can fit the problem that you wanted to solve, then you will want to use it to make things simple to make it easy for you. I got one more for you!

3. Interior lot with 2 given dimension

“City/County will be making a pavement assessment and will share 40% from the $90 per square foot pavement cost. Your real estate professional will then calculate how much will be your pavement cost share for your 200 x 100 linear foot frontage of your interior lot.”

Why does the interior lot have 2 dimensions? What will be my frontage from these two dimensions then? Don’t rattle yourself! Just like what we mentioned, the first figure will always be the frontage of the property, which means in this case, it will be 200 ft.

Since you have that cleared out! Then let’s get rolling!

First, total pavement cost:
( 200 linear foot * $90/sqft. ) = $18,000

Second, total owners’ share:

[ $18,000 * (100%-40%) ] = x

[ $18,000 * (60%) ] = $10,800

Third, property owner share / your share:

( $10,800 / 2 ) = $5,400

Great! Now that you are getting the right understanding on how to ace this type of special assessment questionnaire then we are getting higher odds of you passing the real estate licensing exam! We will be making more of this blog articles that will act as your exam prep before you take your examination.

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