Petitioner in Hernando County hearing says appraised value far above 2023 sale price

Frank Sostak told a Hernando County special magistrate on Jan. 9, 2025, that the property appraiser’s 2024 just value of $307,325 for his Brookridge home is “grossly overstated” after he purchased the house for $215,000 in June 2023. The hearing was before Special Magistrate Colleen Millett.

Sostak, the petitioner, said the county’s assessment puts the home roughly $92,000 above his purchase price and noted a Zillow estimate of about $227,400 in December 2024. “If we paid $215,000 in June of 2023, and we are the market... how can there be any validity in the assessed value of $307,324 after only 6 months of the purchase date,” Sostak said.

The Property Appraiser’s Office, represented in the hearing by Daniel Scott, described its mass-appraisal process and told the magistrate that some sales can be excluded as statistical outliers. “With sales reports and the way that mass appraisal works... if the sale of the property is much smaller or much larger than what we indicate the value to be, that can fall outside of a range where we are told not to consider that sale because it’s an outlier,” Daniel Scott said. Scott also acknowledged the office’s staff “should have included” the subject sale in the sales grid and said including it “absolutely would have” affected the indicated value.

The Property Appraiser’s Office provided its case packet showing: the subject at 14338 Evermore Street, Brooksville; an adjusted assessed value of $307,325 for 2024 with taxable value shown as $257,325; 2,051 heated square feet recorded and an adjusted square footage of 2,650; and a per-adjusted-square-foot assessment of about $114.83. The office’s comp testing produced an indicated value of roughly $345,788 and an alternative $130 per-square-foot figure; the office also reported using four neighborhood sales for the comparison and applied a cost-of-sale adjustment in its analysis.

Sostak and the appraiser’s representative disagreed on comparability. Sostak argued the house’s auxiliary under-roof space — including two large carports and other non-livable areas — inflates the county’s adjusted square footage and assessment. The appraiser’s representative explained how the office treats auxiliary areas: garages are taxed at 55 percent of their square footage, screen porches at 45 percent and open porches at 30 percent, and that the county’s adjusted-square-foot figure is lower than the home’s total under-roof area.

Millett said she would review the evidence and issue a recommendation to the Value Adjustment Board within a few weeks. Neither side received a final decision at the hearing.

The record of the hearing will be used by the Value Adjustment Board to reach a final determination on Sostak’s petition.