Condos, Apartments Hit With New Impact Fees

"Sure, the buyers of these new condo units are largely single individuals and retired professionals without children attending public schools but the bottom line here is that a stable school construction program will, in the long run, place the developers' projects even more in demand than they are today," Dean Fritchen, a senior broker in the Winter Park office of Coldwell Banker Commercial NRT tells GlobeSt.com.

About 6,000 condo and apartment units on the drawing boards of developers and architects will pay Orange County $3,807 per unit when construction begins. The fees are typically paid when a developer or general contractor pulls the project's building permit. The old impact fee was $1,907 per unit.

School officials anticipate the new fee schedule will generate $40 million a year for new schools. A typical high school with a capacity for 1,000 students, currently costs about $20 million in hard construction costs, area construction industry sources tell GlobeSt.com.

Orange County commissioners voted 6-1 for the new impact fee schedule despite heated protests from the Home Builders Association of Metro Orlando and lobbyists for condo and apartment project developers. Impact fees for single-family residences will jump to $7,000 per home from $1,907 when the new fee schedule begins May 1.

The $7,000 impact fee in Orange County is the third highest in the state. Neighboring Osceola County charges a fee of $9,708 per home, an amount that faces a court challenge by the Florida Home Builders Association and independent builders and developers. Another neighboring county, Lake, increased its fee to $7,055 per unit on Feb. 1, 2004.

Orange County Mayor Rich Crotty says the county based its new fee schedule on construction prices valid in 2000. If the fees were based on today's hard construction costs, the fee per residential unit would be about $8,800.