We buy houses in Okaloosa County, FL.

Florida's system is not Mississippi's and not Alabama's. Real estate taxes become delinquent April 1 with a three percent charge added, and the Tax Collector must hold a tax certificate sale on or before June 1. Okaloosa County runs its certificate sale online each year and publishes the terms in a booklet beforehand. The Tax Collector's office quotes the payoff on a specific parcel, and that quoted figure is the only one worth planning against.

Bidding runs downward from a statutory maximum of eighteen percent interest and the lowest rate takes the certificate. The certificate is a lien, not a change of ownership. Two years after April 1 of the year it was issued, the holder may apply for a tax deed, and the Okaloosa County Clerk of Court and Comptroller then sells the property at public auction. Until that auction, redeeming ends the matter and you keep the property.

Florida foreclosure is judicial, so the lender must sue, serve you, and get a judgment before any sale. Under Florida Statute 45.0315 your right of redemption ends when the clerk files the certificate of sale, or at the time the judgment sets if that is later. Florida gives no redemption period after the sale. If you have been told about a year to buy it back afterward, that is Alabama's rule, one state over, and it does not reach across the line.

For an owner on active duty this county has a protection the others rarely need. Under the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, a mortgage taken out before you entered active duty generally cannot be foreclosed without a court order during your service and for twelve months after it ends, whether or not you told the servicer you were serving. Tell your servicer and your base legal assistance office before you decide anything. Legal assistance is free, and faster than anything we could do.

In Destin and along the beach the tax question is usually the exemption rather than the delinquency. Save Our Homes caps a homestead's assessed value increase at three percent or the consumer price index, whichever is lower, and applies only while the property is your homestead. A place you rent by the week is not, so it falls under the ten percent non-homestead cap, which does not cover school district levies, with no exemption, and resets to market value the January 1 after a change of ownership.