There's nothing wrong with Miami Shores. It's a nice Village. It has a range of areas, some neighborhoods and some commercial, and there are appealing sections in which to own a house. In fact, some of those sections are frankly upscale.
The fact is, I almost moved to Miami Shores in 2007. I was planning to get married, and my then fiancee thought it would be more balanced if she and I didn't live in my house, in Biscayne Park, and we didn't live in her house, in the "High Pines" section between Coral Gables and South Miami. She insisted we consider getting a different house: "our" house. She wanted to look in Miami Shores. Which we did. And decided to stay in "my" house, because house prices in Miami Shores were way too high. (I felt quite relieved, because I like it here, and I didn't at all want to move.)
And that's why I don't live in Miami Shores. It's why almost all of us don't live there. It's too expensive to have there the house each of us has here. It costs too much to buy it, and the taxes are too high. Not because the ad valorem rate is higher. It isn't. It's slightly lower. It's because the market values, and the assessed values, are so much higher.
I pay a good deal less in ad valorem property taxes on my house in BP than I would pay on the same house in MSV. If the BP tax rate was 10 mills, I would still pay much less here than I would for the same house there.
So I have no complaint about the seemingly unusually high property tax rate in BP. I wouldn't care if it was higher. It's a high tax rate, but a low tax. And I get something very special for the tax I pay. I get a unique and charming neighborhood, and I get the best police (lowest crime rate for a municipality like this?) in the state. I get life on a small and friendly scale. I get genuinely personal service from the people we hire. I like it. It's worth paying for. The fact is, I'd have to pay a lot more, and I'd get less, if I lived in Miami Shores.
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