by this statement;
"Florida has a tax free LT muni-bond delivering good returns in the Vanguard Group for Florida residents."
Do you mean that Vanguard Funds has a Florida Muni Bond fund you are interested in? Do you have the 5 letter ticker? I would be interested in looking at it if what you are referring to is indeed a Mutual Fund. If you don't have the ticker, just the proper name of the fund will help.
To my knowledge, Florida GO bonds are still rated very well. I did a cursory search on http://investinginbonds.com/ and it appears that most of the State of Florida bonds are rated AAA and have, for the most part, been bid into premium territory.
Since I lived in Lee County since 2006 through most of the mess of the last few years and Lee County had the distinction of trading with Clark County, NV on an almost weekly basis the title of leading the country in foreclosures, I was interested to see how their bonds are holding up. From the same website, recently traded Lee County bonds of various types look to have a A+ or better rating. So they have been beaten up a bit, but many of them are selling at a premium.
Because of the way the website I linked above lays out, I can not link directly to the info I searched, so here's how to find it;
Open the link and hover your mouse over "Bond Markets & Prices" at the top. When the drop down appears, click on "Municipal Market-at-a-Glance"
When that page opens, click the drop down for "Choose a State" under "Bonds Traded Today" and select Florida (obviously).
You'll get a new window (at least I did using Firefox) with all the bonds traded today listed by maturity date. Click the drop down at the top for "Sort By" and select "Issuer" and hit "re-calculate". That will put them in alphabetical order. State of Florida issues start on page 4. Lee County bonds start on page 12. Take note of the Dade County issues on page 4 as well. Though there are only a handful of issues listed, all are rated "BBB" or not rated. Dade County includes Miami and has also been badly affected by the real estate crash.
= new reply since forum marked as read