How Much Does Homestead Exemption Save in Florida?

1. How Does Homestead Tax Exemption Work?

Florida’s homestead exemption takes two amounts off the assessed value of the home you own and live in, and each amount applies to a different part of your tax bill.

• The first $25,000 of assessed value is exempt from every property tax, including school taxes.
• The next $25,000, from $25,000 to $50,000, is fully taxable.
• Value above $50,000 carries the second exemption, $26,411 for 2026, which applies to every tax except school taxes.

A home assessed at $76,411 or more gets the full benefit of both. The school levy sees only the first $25,000, which is why the exemption saves less than the headline $51,411 suggests. Florida applies these two exemptions before any other homestead exemption, such as a senior or disabled veteran exemption, and applies the others in the order that produces the lowest taxable value.

Here is one Miami-Dade example at the county’s 2025 average rates. A homestead assessed at $300,000 would owe about $5,547 with no exemption. With the exemption, the school taxes are figured on $275,000 and everything else on $248,589, and the bill falls to about $4,771. The exemption saves roughly $775 a year.

2. How Much Does the Exemption Save, County by County?

At each county’s 2025 average tax rates, the homestead exemption saves an estimated $346 a year in Monroe County to $942 in St. Lucie County, for a home assessed at $76,411 or more.

The house does not move the number once it clears $76,411, and the tax rate moves it a great deal. Monroe and Collier have two of the three lowest average rates in Florida, so the same exemption is worth $393 in Collier and $346 in Monroe, against $850 in Broward. The table shows 16 counties, and the Save Our Homes columns are explained in section 4.

3. What Is the Taxable Value of My Homestead?

Your homestead’s taxable value is its assessed value minus its exemptions, and a homestead has two taxable values, one for school taxes and one for everything else.

Start with the assessed value, which for a homestead is the Save Our Homes capped value rather than the market value. Subtract $25,000 to get the school taxable value. Subtract $51,411 to get the non-school taxable value. Any further exemption, such as a disabled veteran’s, comes off after that. The August Notice of Proposed Property Taxes prints the market value, the assessed value, the exemptions and the taxable value for each taxing authority, so you can check the arithmetic against your own home.

4. How Much Does Save Our Homes Add?

For anyone who has owned a Florida homestead for several years, Save Our Homes saves far more than the exemption. The average Miami-Dade homestead is assessed $294,035 below its market value on the 2026 roll, worth an estimated $5,436 a year at the county’s 2025 average tax rate.

Save Our Homes caps the yearly increase in a homestead’s assessed value at 3 percent or the change in the Consumer Price Index, whichever is lower, and never lets the assessed value exceed market value. The cap starts the January after the home first receives the exemption, so the first year has no protection. In a rising market the gap between the capped value and the market value grows every year, and the property tax is figured on the capped value. Our page on the Save Our Homes cap explains what resets it, and the county-by-county figures for all 67 counties, with the median as well as the average, are in our dataset on Florida Save Our Homes savings by county.

The cap can move with you. An owner who had a Florida homestead exemption as of January 1 in any of the three preceding years can carry up to $500,000 of the accumulated difference to a new Florida homestead, filed with the new homestead application.

5. What Can Make You Lose the Savings?

Three things cost Florida owners the exemption and the cap together, and all three are choices made for good reasons.

1. Renting the home. Renting all or substantially all of a homestead is an abandonment of it until the owner moves back in. Florida forgives a rental in the year it happens unless the home is rented more than 30 days a year for two years in a row.
2. A new deed. A sale, a gift to a child or a transfer into an LLC is a change of ownership, and the Save Our Homes cap resets to market value the next January. A transfer to a surviving spouse is not a change of ownership, and neither is a lady bird deed in which you keep the life estate. Our page on how to file for homestead exemption lists the changes that require a new application.
3. A residency benefit in another state. An owner who receives a tax exemption or credit in another state that depends on permanent residency there is not entitled to the Florida exemption. Taking it anyway carries back taxes for up to ten years, a 50 percent penalty and 15 percent interest a year.

6. Is the Homestead Exemption Going Up?

The second exemption rises with inflation every January 1. Florida voters indexed it in 2024, starting with the 2025 tax roll, which is why it is $26,411 for 2026 rather than $25,000. The first $25,000 is fixed in the constitution and stays where it is.

Amendment 3, on the November 3, 2026 ballot, would change the non-school exemption and the cap on non-homestead property. We take no position on it here. The ballot text, the effective dates and a county-by-county estimate of what it would do are on our Amendment 3 guide.

What Does It Cost to Protect the Exemption in Your Estate Plan?

A lady bird deed passes your home to your family outside probate while you keep living there, and it does not reset Save Our Homes during your life. The deed is a flat fee from $399 for one owner and $449 for two, plus recording. The Secure Will Estate Plan, flat fee from $1,200, includes a lady bird deed on your home along with the will, the power of attorney and the health-care documents. Advertised fees are honored for 90 days from the posted date, and government costs such as recording are additional and passed through at cost.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common Situations

The couple who bought in 2004. A Broward couple bought their house in 2004 and have kept the exemption ever since. Their notice shows an assessed value well below what the house would sell for, and the gap is worth several thousand dollars a year in tax. When they ask about adding their son to the deed, the first question is how the deed is written, because a change of ownership would reset the cap, and the cap is worth more to them than the exemption.

The retiree weighing a winter rental. A Sarasota widow plans to spend January to March with her daughter in Ohio and rent her house for those months. Ninety days is more than 30, so two winters in a row would cost her the exemption and the cap. She decides not to rent the house, keeping it her permanent residence and keeping the cap she has built since 2009.

Sources of Law

• Fla. Const. art. VII, §6(a)(1) (the first $25,000 against all levies; the exemption on assessed value from $50,000 to $75,000 for levies other than school district levies); §6(a)(2) (annual inflation adjustment of the second amount); §4(d)(1) to (4) (Save Our Homes, the lower of 3 percent or the change in the Consumer Price Index; no assessment above just value; reassessment after a change of ownership; new homesteads assessed at just value as of January 1 of the year following establishment).
• Fla. Stat. §196.031(1)(a) and (b) (the two exemptions); (6) (no exemption while claiming a residency-based exemption or credit in another state); (8) (the two exemptions applied before other homestead exemptions, the others in the order producing the lowest taxable value).
• Fla. Stat. §193.155(1) to (3) (annual cap; assessed value lowered to just value; change of ownership and the surviving-spouse exception); §193.155(8) (portability of up to $500,000 to a new homestead within the three preceding years).
• Fla. Stat. §196.061 (rental of all or substantially all of a homestead as abandonment; the 30-day, two-consecutive-year rule); §196.161 (ten-year lookback, 50 percent penalty, 15 percent interest). 2026 Florida Statutes, read October 1, 2026.
• County millage: Florida Department of Revenue, Data Book 2025, millage_taxes_levied.xlsx, total and non-school county average rates. Save Our Homes gap: Department of Revenue 2026 preliminary NAL roll files, compiled in our Save Our Homes dataset. The 2026 second exemption figure ($26,411) as published by county property appraisers for the 2026 roll.
• Case retold below: Haddock v. Carmody, 1 So. 3d 1133 (Fla. 1st DCA 2009). Opinion read in full; retrieved October 1, 2026. The court applied the rental statute as it read before the 2012 and 2013 amendments.

Why the Cap Is the Asset Worth Guarding

Cases with this shape keep coming up, and it is usually an owner who treats a homestead like an investment property for a few weeks a year and loses the exemption for every one of those years.

A couple owned a condominium at Amelia Island Plantation from 1995. In 2002 the husband made it his permanent residence, and he received the homestead exemption for 2003, 2004 and 2005. The unit stayed in the resort’s rental program the whole time, rented by the night whenever the owners were away (the resort encouraged owners to lock up their belongings, and he kept his in two locked owner’s closets). The program’s records showed 113 nights rented in 2003, 104 in 2004 and 66 in 2005. In October 2005 the Property Appraiser revoked the exemption for all three years. The couple took the unit out of the rental pool, paid the back taxes under protest, and watched the taxable value climb once the Save Our Homes cap came off with the exemption. A trial court sided with them, and in 2009 the First District reversed, holding that renting the entire dwelling to others abandoned it as a homestead for tax purposes.

In reviewing the Florida cases on homestead and rentals, I have a few take-home points.

The first is what was really lost. The exemption on a condo like that one is worth a few hundred dollars a year. The cap is worth more, and it does not come back on the old basis. Once the exemption goes, the home is reassessed at market value and the cap starts over from there.

The second is the rule today. Florida rewrote the rental statute in 2012 and 2013. Renting all or substantially all of the home is still an abandonment, and the law now forgives a rental in the year it happens unless the home is rented more than 30 days a year for two years in a row. The nights in this case would exceed that allowance under the current rule too. Avoid putting a homestead into a short-term rental program on the assumption that keeping a closet locked keeps it yours.

The third is timing. The revocation reached back three years in one letter. An owner who wants to rent should decide before January 1 which way the home is going to be treated, because the Property Appraiser decides afterward and the lookback can run as long as ten years. One limit is worth stating plainly. The opinion does not say how much the couple paid, so I cannot tell you what the three years cost them in dollars.

Kevin D. Klagge, Esq., admitted in Florida since 2012. The case described above is a decision of a Florida court rather than a matter handled by this firm. Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

Updated on October 1, 2026. Reviewed by Kevin D. Klagge, Esq., Fla. Bar No. 99502. Attorney Kevin Klagge represents families, businesses, and international clients in estate and tax planning, business structuring, and international law, with a focus on Florida legal tools. He litigates estate and business issues in court. General information about Florida law, not legal advice, and no attorney-client relationship is created. Do not send confidential information until we have agreed to represent you.