I've been on a 2 week hiatus - otherwise known as the family summer vacation - but real estate news seemed to cling like so many burrs.

I can say one thing with confidence: If Florida property taxes are a burden, New York state property taxes are 500 pounds of lead strapped to a baby's back.

When I say New York I'm not talking about Manhattan or plush bedroom communities on Long Island or along the Hudson Valley. I'm talking about my own birth place, upstate New York. With a few exceptions, its economy is a collage of declining rust belt industries and hardscrabble dairy farms.

Anyway, I met a couple people with newly built houses similar in size to my own. They were paying 2 1/2 times in property taxes, about $13,000 versus my $5,000.

What do they get for those taxes? The tatty roads are a shock absorber salesman's best friend, excelling at jarring loose wheel covers. The schools are decent, but staffed with aggressively unionized teachers. If it's a choice between helping the students and pleasing the unionized workforce, guess who gets the short stick?

Social services are wasteful to the point where ne'er-do-wells from New York City relocate there to enjoy the relatively lavish free lunch. One homeowner said the "Medicare" portion of his property taxes outstripped his own health insurance premium at work.

The "generosity" is self defeating. Thousands of the unemployed and the unemployable migrate to these towns, devouring the attention of social workers, teachers and the police.

What you have in upstate New York is the worst of both worlds: High taxes and poor services. Things aren't that bad here. Until the housing boom, the Tampa Bay area was pretty much a low tax area with medicre services.

Our taxes have increased, but services have picked up a bit - at least those services most useful to homeowners (schools, parks, roads, fire coverage, etc).

One more twist. Home prices in these New York towns are among the lowest in the nation. It tells you a lot about tax rates there that a home priced half of what it is in Tampa still generates twice the property taxes. Florida is still a bargain.