Hernando County special magistrate reviews multiple property-tax appeals; recommends lower value in one case

BROOKSVILLE, Fla. — Special Magistrate Robert Hicks held continuation hearings on multiple property-value appeals Jan. 21, 2025, and said he will send recommended findings to the Hernando County Value Adjustment Board (VAB) in the coming weeks.

Hicks heard evidence from the Hernando County Property Appraiser’s Office and from petitioners in separate cases involving single-family and manufactured homes across the county. The most significant development came in a Brooksville appeal in which the magistrate recommended a lower “just value” than the appraiser’s assessment.

In the first matter, concerning a newly built 2023 single-family home in Southern Hills Plantation at 194 Forest Garden Court, the Property Appraiser’s Office had listed the 2024 just and assessed value at $472,995 and a taxable value of $422,995. The appraiser presented three comparable sales that reconciled to an indicated market value of $523,324 (about $183 per adjusted square foot). The appraiser’s packet showed a weighted mean sales-to-assessment ratio of roughly 83% and a square-foot median of about $184.

Petitioner John McDonald disputed the appraisal, submitted his own calculation (an unadjusted average of the three comps totaling about $433,682) and pressed the magistrate to apply the 8th statutory criterion — a cost-of-sale adjustment the county typically models at 15%.

Hicks said he could not rely solely on an individual sale price and that the appraiser’s mass-appraisal methods meant not every property receives the same percentage adjustment. After reviewing the packet and the math presented, Hickssaid he would set the recommended just value at $444,825, explaining that figure reflected the sales reconciliation adjusted toward the county’s cost-of-sale practice. “I’m gonna say that the just value based on the information in the record is $444,825,” he said. The recommendation will be forwarded to the VAB for final action.

In a second appeal, involving a 1978 manufactured home at 14210 Sandhurst Street in Brookridge Unit 6 (petitioner: Debbie Small), the Property Appraiser’s Office presented three neighborhood sales producing an indicated value of $170,361 (about $94 per adjusted square foot) and a weighted mean sales ratio near 73%. The appraiser said applying a customary 15% cost-of-sale adjustment would yield roughly $144,806 — a figure that exceeds the parcel’s current just and assessed value of $94,764. Magistrate Hicks noted the appraiser had accounted for condition (additional depreciation for documented water damage) and, after hearing rebuttal on comparability and the ages of the sales, said he would take the record and include these details in his recommendation to the VAB.

A later hearing involving a Spring Hill property in Pristine Place (3423 Rose Bay Court) generated a similar procedural outcome. The Property Appraiser’s Office presented three sales that reconciled to an indicated value of $485,874; Hicks observed that a 15% reduction for cost of sale would produce about $412,992, which he said he would consider when drafting his recommendation. The parcel’s 2024 just and assessed value was listed at $420,294 with a taxable value of $315,294; the appraiser had conducted a field review in August 2024 to close out an air-conditioning permit and used the sales-comparison approach in its packet.

Across the hearings, petitioners repeatedly questioned the appraiser’s choice of comparables (age differences, renovations, lot size and auxiliary enclosed space) and, in some cases, the appraiser’s exterior-versus-interior square-foot calculations. Property Appraiser staff Daniel Scott and Nicholas Ciszek explained the office’s mass-appraisal approach, comp selection, comp adjustments for land size and effective age, and the office’s practice of applying a sales-to-assessment reconciliation to estimate a cost-of-sale adjustment. Several petitioners raised homestead and ordinance questions (Hernando County ordinances were cited by one petitioner), but Hicks clarified the hearings’ scope was the determination of just value — the market value as of the statutory date — not the assessment caps or homestead-exemption eligibility.

Hicks repeatedly told petitioners he would review the submitted packets and the additional sales detail he had ordered after the October 24, 2024 remands. On multiple matters he said he would take the record and make recommended findings to the Value Adjustment Board. “I will take this under advisement. I’ll take a look back through all this again, over the weekend and make a recommended decision to the board in a couple weeks,” he told one petitioner.

What happens next: Under the county’s process, Hicks’s recommended decisions will be forwarded to the Hernando County VAB, which makes final determinations on petitions. Any party dissatisfied with the VAB’s final decision retains any statutory appeals rights available under Florida law.

Speakers in the hearings included Special Magistrate Robert Hicks; county appraisers Daniel Scott and Nicholas Ciszek; and multiple petitioners, among them John McDonald and Debbie Small. Several hearings were continuations remanded from Oct. 24, 2024, and the parties supplied supplemental sales data at Hicks’s request.