Q&A with St. Johns County Property Appraiser Eddie Creamer

Q: Do you have an overview of single family home sales in 2021?
A: Yes, here is an overview of what our office has seen last year:

• There were 32,711 single family home sales that closed by Dec. 31, 2021. As of that date, there were also 2,235 pending sales. 
• The average sales price for a single family home in St. Johns County increased from $321,000 to $378,000 last year. That’s a 17.8 percent increase.
• Another interesting thing is the percentage of list price received: 99.4 percent. 

Q: What does it look like for 2022?
A: There are currently 3,102 active listings of homes for sale, what we would call inventory available. At the current pace of sales, that’s only 1.1 months of inventory, which is very low. It’s clear we will continue to see increasing prices due to the low inventory and the increased demand of so many people moving to our county. 

Q: What about new construction of single family homes in 2021?
A: We added 5,000 newly constructed homes to the tax roll in 2021. The value of these newly constructed homes was $1.6 billion. Even this early in our 2022 tax year, our tax roll is up 11.67 percent and we still have five months of valuation to go until the tax roll year-end of July 31.

Q: What are some statistics regarding Homestead Exemption?
A: In 2021, our office processed 18,100 new Homestead Exemption applications. Recall that for homeowners in our county that have Homestead Exemption on their property, as part of Save Our Homes, each year the assessed value of their home can only increase by the lower of 3 percent or the cost of living index (CPI). For the past five years, the CPI has been significantly below 2 percent, so that has marked the value increase. This year’s CPI was just published and it is 7 percent, the highest since Save Our Homes started in 2002. So it looks like this year, the assessed value increase will be utilizing the 3 percent figure.

Q: What do you see ahead for this year?
A: Every indication points to our county still growing, prices still increasing — and another busy year for 2022.

Q: What is the best way for our readers to contact you?
A: Our office is located at 4030 Lewis Speedway Ste. 203, (904) 827-5500. It is open Monday – Friday, 8:30 a.m. – 5 p.m. Also, readers can email me at Eddie@sjcpa.us or call me at (904) 827-5500.