Wetlands Studies, Special Assessments on Vacant Land
At the time of publication, most of the properties in San Carlos Estates have assessments for the new infrastructure. If your mission is to figure out if a property has a special assessment for the new road paving, water and sewer you can check the Lee County Tax Collector website - www.LeeTC.com.
From the menu across the website choose - Property Tax>Search Records.
- Select the option to search either by account number, name, address, personal ID number. Official Records Search.
- After the correct property “real property information” page loads for the real estate for which you’re investigating scroll down the page to the link titled “tax detail”.
- The tax detail explains where the money collected in the taxes, in essence, gets spent. Ad-valorem taxes include the school district, public library, city of Bonita Springs, mosquito control.
There is a section below ad-valorem tax called “Non-Ad Valorem Assessments” and that is where the special assessments, CDD’s, road assessments, utility assessments are located.
Just like buying a home or condo, vacant land, vacant acreage and vacant lots in Lee County, Florida require inspections to make sure the land is not encumbered with wetlands. An environmental study, environmental audit or wetlands report can be ordered with a representative from the State of Florida at this web address:
http://www.dep.state.fl.us/south/ERP/LeeDeterminations/LeeCounty.htm.
The vacant lot must be staked and marked for the wetland inspection to be performed properly and may be required by the county or even the independent wetland inspector. This may require a new survey to be ordered on the vacant real estate prior to the environmental inspection taking place.
There are also independent, wetland and environmental inspection services which can be retained to investigate real state for wetlands or protected species of animals/wildlife. An example of an independent wetland inspector would be Mike Ramsey of Ramsey Inc. 239-564-1660 www.ramseyinc.net has more information on wetland inspections and environmental inspections hired from the private sector.