Property Tax Reassessment versus Sale Price

[Curtis Wang]

Hey everyone - I've searched for other posts on this, but don't see anything definitive. This is in regards to a tax reassessment triggered by a sale. Apart from California, which has Prop 13, does anyone know why the market value county assessors use for property taxes is almost always less than the sale value for many states? Any color on how they assess? Not complaining, but whenever I read the tax assessor policies (specifically in FL), they say they use FMV to determine the assessed value. However, it's almost always lower than the sale price by a good margin. What better sense of FMV than the most recent sale price and why don't they just use the sale price?

The point I'm getting to is that if the county wanted to, could they just take the assessed price all the way up to the sale price, similar to CA? I currently underwrite by looking at recent sales and what percentage of the actual sale price the property gets reassessed at in order to get a rough sense on the %, but I can't help but think there's risk that property taxes could increase by even more than that if the county is hurting for tax money and wanted to push values.

Thoughts?