Florida Property Tax Elimination

Florida Property Tax Elimination vs. What Homeowners Pay Now

• Florida has not eliminated property taxes, and Amendment 3 on the November 3, 2026 ballot wouldn’t eliminate them either (it’s not all bad news…keep reading).
• It would raise the non-school homestead exemption to $150,000 in 2027 and $250,000 in 2028, then hand a future Legislature the job of writing a schedule for wiping out the rest of the non-school portion.
• School taxes stay exactly as they are, and school millage is roughly 38 percent of a typical Vero Beach bill, so nobody’s bill hits zero.
• Anyone who establishes Florida residency after January 1, 2027 waits five years for the bigger exemption, which makes the timing of your move worth real money.
• Nothing changes for your 2026 tax bill, and the amendment needs 60 percent voter approval before any of it takes effect.

Every week I get some version of the same question from buyers up north: “I heard Florida is getting rid of property taxes, should I wait?” No. And the thing on the ballot isn’t what most people think it is.

Here’s what’s actually happening, and how it stacks up against the bill you’re paying today.

What’s actually on the November ballot

The 2026 regular session ended in March with nothing. Then in a June 1 to 3 special session the Legislature passed CS/HJR 1-F, placing a property tax constitutional amendment on the November 2026 ballot for a 60 percent voter-approval vote. It cleared the House 75 to 26 and the Senate 30 to 9. That measure is Amendment 3.

Then it got interesting. Three lawsuits challenged the ballot wording, and Leon County Circuit Judge David Frank declared the ballot title and summary “clearly and conclusively defective,” giving the Attorney General 10 days to draft a replacement that describes the amendment rather than campaigns for it. He was blunt about the old title, “Save Our Homes From Excessive Property Taxes,” calling it campaign messaging rather than a neutral description. DeSantis said the state wouldn’t appeal. The rewrite was finished on August 14, 2026, and the measure now appears as “Increased Homestead Exemption; Lower Cap on Increases in Non-Homestead Property Assessments.”

The amendment survived. Only the sales pitch got struck.

Here’s what it would do if 60 percent of voters say yes:

• Raise the non-school homestead exemption to $150,000 in 2027, then $250,000 in 2028, with inflation indexing starting in 2029 Florida Policy
• Direct a future Legislature to prescribe a procedure by which counties, cities, and special districts could exempt assessed value all the way up to the full remaining value of a homestead, with no additional voter approval required Florida Policy
• Cut the annual assessment growth cap on non-homestead property from 10 percent to 5 percent Florida Policy
• Restrict what’s left of local property tax revenue to a state-defined list of core uses (public safety, schools, infrastructure, natural resources, debt service, retirement, county officer operations) Florida Policy
• Make anyone who establishes Florida residency after January 1, 2027 wait five years before getting the increased exemptionTwo other measures share the ballot, one exempting certain agriculture and agritourism tangible personal property, and one changing the state’s budget stabilization fund. Each needs 60 percent too. Florida Policy

What you’re paying right now

Florida’s current system already protects long-time owners better than almost anywhere in the country. Three pieces do the work.

The homestead exemption knocks $25,000 off assessed value for all levies, plus a second slice of about $25,000 that applies to everything except school taxes. Voters indexed that second slice to inflation with Amendment 5 in 2024, so it creeps up each year.

Save Our Homes caps annual assessed value growth on a homestead at 3 percent or CPI, whichever is lower. The cap has hit the full 3 percent only nine times since 1995. Over a decade or two the gap between market value and assessed value gets enormous. Statewide, homestead assessments average 50.3 percent below market value.

Portability lets you carry up to $500,000 of accumulated Save Our Homes benefit to your next Florida home.

Locally, a homesteaded house inside Vero Beach city limits pays somewhere around 15.4 mills combined once you stack county, city, school, water management, and special districts. The School District of Indian River County has held its total millage at 5.753 mills. So call it roughly 5.75 mills of school tax and about 9.3 mills of everything else. That split is the whole story, because Amendment 3 only touches the second number.

Side by side on a $400,000 Vero Beach homestead

Same house, same millage, three scenarios. Assessed value of $400,000, homestead in place.

Real money. Roughly $155 a month by 2028 on that house. Not a zero bill.

Now run a $250,000 mainland cottage. Today it pays about $1,860 non-school and $1,294 school. By 2028 the $250,000 exemption swallows the entire non-school side, leaving just the $1,294 school portion. Analysts estimate the $250,000 exemption would wipe out non-school property taxes for roughly 60 percent of Florida’s homesteaded owners. That’s where the “elimination” talk comes from. It’s accurate for a modest home and wrong for anything above the median. Property Exemption

What the amendment leaves completely alone

Four things people assume are in there, and aren’t.

School taxes. Untouched. That’s about 38 percent of a typical local bill.

The Save Our Homes 3 percent cap. Despite the original ballot title borrowing the name, the amendment does nothing to reform the assessment growth cap for primary residences.

Millage rates. Exemptions shrink the base. They don’t stop a county commission from raising the rate on what’s left. The Tax Foundation’s read is that removing this much of the tax base doesn’t reduce the cost of local services, it just forces the revenue to come from somewhere else, including higher millage on everything still taxable.

Non-ad valorem assessments. Solid waste, stormwater, fire districts, CDD fees. Those line items on your bill aren’t property taxes and aren’t affected.

And the revenue hole is not small. Florida’s Revenue Estimating Conference put the recurring cost near $12 billion, a figure that doesn’t even include the eventual full elimination of non-school homestead taxes. County revenue losses from full elimination would run from 2 to 24 percent depending on the county, and the Florida League of Cities estimates municipalities would lose close to 38 percent of property tax revenue on average. No replacement revenue is written into the amendment. Cities and counties will close that gap with fees, higher rates on non-homestead property, or service cuts.

Worth noting for anyone weighing carrying costs here: when Florida voters were asked whether lawmakers should tackle property tax or property insurance, they picked insurance relief by nearly 2 to 1. In Vero Beach that instinct is right. Insurance is the line item doing more damage to local affordability than the tax bill is.

The five-year catch that matters most if you’re moving here

This is the part nobody’s talking about, and it’s the part that changes decisions.

Someone who establishes residency before January 1, 2027 gets the new exemption. Someone who buys and homesteads in 2027 pays under the current system until their fifth year of receiving the homestead exemption, at which point they get the same benefit as everyone else. Two tax systems, sorted by when you showed up.

The judge specifically found the old summary botched the description of who this applies to and when eligibility starts, so read the revised language carefully rather than trusting a headline. And the resolution never defines what “establishing Florida residency” means for people who don’t yet own property, which leaves renters who plan to buy in an unclear spot.

Practically, if you’re already planning a move in the next year or two and you want to be on the right side of that line, you need to own and occupy by January 1, 2027 and file for homestead by the March 1 deadline. That’s a closing timeline, not a someday plan. I walk through the mechanics in the guide on claiming the Florida homestead exemption when you’re moving from out of state and the steps for establishing Florida residency.

Talk to a CPA or a real estate attorney before you let a tax provision drive your closing date. This is a proposed constitutional amendment, not law, and the implementing details get written later.

Second homes, rentals, and snowbirds

If the house isn’t your primary residence, the exemption changes do nothing for you. What you get instead is the assessment cap dropping from 10 percent to 5 percent, which slows how fast your assessed value climbs but doesn’t touch the rate.

The risk cuts the other way. The Florida Chamber of Commerce warned state leaders that shifting the property tax burden onto non-homesteaded properties would likely mean higher prices, fewer jobs, and diminished investment. Landlords and commercial owners are the obvious place for local governments to look. If you’re buying a vacation home in Florida or holding a rental here, model your carrying cost with room for millage increases, not decreases.

Renters get nothing directly, and Florida’s 3 million renter households are excluded from the benefit even though landlords typically pass some of the property tax burden through.

If you’re buying or selling right now

Four things I’d tell a client this week.

1. Nothing has changed for 2026. Assessments, rates, and collections run exactly as they do now. Most provisions wouldn’t take effect until January 1, 2027, with the second exemption bump in 2028. Underwrite today’s numbers.
2. Stop pricing your bill off the seller’s tax line. This is the single most expensive mistake I see out-of-state buyers make. A long-time owner’s Save Our Homes benefit dies at closing and your assessed value resets to what you paid. Your first bill will be substantially higher than theirs, and Amendment 3 doesn’t change that mechanic at all.
3. Don’t wait for November to make a move. If the amendment passes, the exemption applies to the house you own then. Sitting out a year of appreciation to maybe save $900 in 2027 is bad math in most cases. Run your own.
4. Watch the local budget hearings, not just the state. Your bill is the sum of every district that taxes your parcel. If they lose base, they set rates. That decision happens in a room in Vero, not in Tallahassee.

If you’re weighing a move to the Treasure Coast and want your actual carrying cost run on a specific address rather than a statewide average, get in touch. I’ll pull the parcel, the exemptions in place, and what the bill looks like the year after you close.

Related reading

• Moving to Vero Beach, Florida: the complete relocation guide
• Why move to Indian River County, Florida
• What home insurance actually costs in Vero Beach
• Claiming the Florida homestead exemption from out of state