The Tax Line on the Home You Are Touring Is Not Your Tax Bill. Here Is What You Will Actually Pay.

Most of my buyers read the tax line on a home and assume it is the number they will pay. On a $3,000,000 purchase in Fort Lauderdale the assessed value resets to the full price, and the bill lands near $59,500 a year at the Property Appraiser's own estimating rate of 19.8394 mills.

The Tax Line You Are Reading Belongs to Someone Else

In 17 years in this market, no single number has surprised my buyers more than their first tax bill.

The figure you see on a home is the current owner's figure. If they have held the home with a homestead exemption for a decade, their assessed value has been capped the whole time. Florida law holds homestead increases to 3 percent a year or the change in the Consumer Price Index, whichever is lower. Their assessed value did not follow the market. Yours will.

What Actually Happens on January 1

Florida Statute 193.155 is short on this point. Property changes hands, and it is assessed at just value as of January 1 of the year following the change of ownership. The cap the previous owner built up does not convey. It does not transfer with the home, and it is not something a good negotiator can protect.

The Notice of Proposed Property Taxes goes to whoever sits on the current year's assessment roll. That is the homeowner selling it, not you. So the first real number you see is the bill itself.

The Math on a $3,000,000 Home

The Broward County Property Appraiser runs its own Home Buyer's Tax Estimator at 19.8394 mills, or 1.98394 percent of taxable value. Here is that rate applied to one home.

• Assessed at $1,400,000, which is where a long-held home might sit: about $27,775 a year
• Assessed at $3,000,000, which is where yours resets: about $59,518 a year
• The difference: about $31,743 a year, or $2,645 a month

That is a worked example, not a quote on a specific home. Two more things it leaves out. The estimating rate is a countywide figure, and your actual rate depends on your municipality and your taxing districts. Fort Lauderdale adopted a city operating rate of 4.11 mills on September 14, and that is only the city slice of a bill that also carries county, school board and district levies.

The estimator also excludes non ad valorem charges for fire, garbage and drainage. Ask for the real bill before you get attached to a number.

Homestead Saves Less Than You Expect. Portability Saves More.

The homestead exemption is $25,000, with an additional $25,000 on the non-school portion. The Property Appraiser puts the 2025 savings at $659 to $1,009 a year. On a $3,000,000 home that is a rounding error.

Portability is the part worth your attention. If you held a homestead anywhere in Florida within the last three tax years, you can carry the gap between just value and assessed value to your new home. The transfer is capped at $500,000. At 19.8394 mills, a full $500,000 transfer is worth about $9,920 a year, every year you own the home.

I have watched buyers move within Broward and leave that on the table because nobody told them to file. It is a form. File it.

If It Is a Second Home, Your Cap Is 10 Percent

Buyers moving here from New York and Chicago often keep the northern home for a few years. That choice changes the math.

Non-homestead residential property is capped at 10 percent a year, not 3 percent, and that cap applies only to levies other than school district levies. School taxes on a second home are not capped at all. Over five years in a rising market, that gap compounds into real money.

The Dates

• Homestead filing for the 2027 tax year is open now, from March 3, 2026 through March 1, 2027
• Late filing for the 2026 tax year closes Friday, September 18, 2026. This one only helps you if you already owned the home and lived here as a permanent resident on January 1, 2026. If you closed this summer, 2027 is your year
• Tax bills carry a 4 percent discount in November, 3 percent in December, 2 percent in January, 1 percent in February, and nothing in March

One more note. There is a proposed state amendment on homestead property taxes in play, and Fort Lauderdale's mayor said on September 14 that homestead property taxes fund about 45 percent of the city budget. I am not going to guess at what it does to your bill before it is decided.

Before You Write the Offer

I run the reset number on every home my buyers consider, before the offer, not after the inspection. It has changed what people were willing to pay more than once. A home that pencils at the current owner's tax figure sometimes does not pencil at yours, and it is better to know that in week one.

If you are looking in Fort Lauderdale and want the real carrying cost on a specific home, send me the address. I will run it and tell you what I find.

Lourdes Maestres and the MPH Team, Fort Lauderdale.