Two condos sit three floors apart in the same Edgewater tower. Same square footage, same view corridor, same HOA. The listing agent hands over comparable sales, a recent appraisal, and a current tax bill that looks almost too good to be true. What the sheet does not say is that the number on it belongs to someone who has owned the unit since 2011. The buyer closing this fall will not inherit that bill. Florida resets it, and the reset is bigger than most people expect.

This is not a Miami quirk that only affects retirees who have owned for decades. It is a structural feature of how every homesteaded property in the state is taxed, and it means the tax line on a listing sheet is close to useless as a forecast of what a buyer will actually pay in year two.

The Cap That Makes Two Identical Units Different Investments

Florida's Save Our Homes law, approved by voters in 1992, caps how fast the assessed value of a homesteaded property can rise each year. The cap is whichever is lower: 3 percent, or the change in the Consumer Price Index. For the 2025 tax roll, that worked out to 2.9 percent, according to the Miami-Dade County Property Appraiser.

The mechanism only kicks in the year after a homeowner first claims the exemption. In that first year, called the base year, assessed value equals market value (Florida calls this "just value"). Every year after, assessed value can climb only by the capped percentage, no matter how much the market value climbs. Over a decade of South Florida appreciation, the gap between what a home is worth and what it is taxed on can widen into six figures.

That gap is not a loophole. It is the entire point of the law. It is also the reason a longtime owner and a first-year owner of the identical unit down the hall can be paying tax bills that differ by thousands of dollars annually.

What a Sale Actually Resets

The cap does not follow the property. It follows the exemption, and the exemption belongs to a specific owner in a specific home. When title changes hands to an unrelated buyer, the accumulated Save Our Homes benefit disappears and the property resets to a new just-value baseline the following year.

That timing detail matters more than most buyers realize. Florida requires that the property be a buyer's permanent residence as of January 1 of a given year to claim the homestead exemption for that year, with the application window running from January 1 to March 1. A buyer who closes even a few days into a new calendar year, rather than before December 31, misses that year's January 1 test and has to carry the property as non-homestead for a full extra tax cycle before the clock can start. Closing date, not just purchase price, decides which tax year a buyer's homestead protection actually begins in.

None of this shows up in the seller's disclosure. It only shows up on the buyer's first TRIM notice, the Notice of Proposed Property Taxes that Miami-Dade mails every August, and by then the purchase is long closed.

Here is what the math looks like on a hypothetical Miami purchase, not a specific listing, just the shape of the pattern:

At a typical Miami-Dade combined millage rate, that roughly $144,000 gap between capped and uncapped assessed value translates into a difference of a few thousand dollars a year in property taxes, compounding for as long as the owner keeps the homestead. A buyer comparing two otherwise identical properties, one held by a longtime owner and one recently sold, is not comparing two tax bills on the same asset. They are comparing year-one pricing to year-fifteen pricing.

The $500,000 Ceiling That Can Strand Part of a Move

Owners who have built up a large Save Our Homes benefit are not without options when they sell. Florida's portability provision lets a homesteaded owner transfer their accumulated assessment difference to a new Florida homestead, as long as they apply within three tax years of the sale.

The catch is a hard ceiling. Only up to $500,000 of that differential can move with the owner. A longtime Miami-Dade homeowner whose market value has climbed for two or three decades can easily accumulate a benefit larger than that cap, in which case whatever exceeds $500,000 is simply lost on the move, whether the owner is trading up to a bigger house nearby or downsizing to a smaller one. For a buyer's agent, this means the seller's stated motivation to sell, and the seller's own tax planning, can be shaped by a ceiling the buyer never sees on the listing.

Non-Homestead Buyers Play a Different Game

None of the Save Our Homes protection applies to a property that is not someone's primary residence. Second homes, seasonal rentals, and straight investment purchases are assessed at full just value every year, subject only to a separate cap on non-homestead properties that currently allows assessed value to rise as much as 10 percent annually.

That distinction is worth sitting with before running a cap rate on a Miami rental unit. An investor buying a unit that a longtime owner has held as a rental for twenty years may find the current assessed value is already close to full market value, since the 10 percent non-homestead cap moves faster than the 3 percent homestead cap and rarely builds the same kind of gap. The seller's tax bill is a much better proxy for the buyer's future bill in a non-homestead purchase than it is in a homesteaded one, which is one more reason the two buyer types need to model taxes differently rather than reading the same number two different ways.

The Vote on November 3 Doesn't Touch the Reset

Florida lawmakers passed a constitutional amendment, formally CS/HJR 1-F, during a special legislative session held June 1 through June 3, 2026. It heads to voters on the November 3, 2026 general election ballot, where it needs at least 60 percent approval to take effect.

If approved, the amendment would raise the homestead exemption on non-school property taxes from the current $50,000 level to $150,000 in 2027 and $250,000 in 2028, adjusted for inflation after that. School district levies, which make up a large share of most Miami-Dade tax bills, are carved out entirely and would be unaffected. The same amendment would also tighten the non-homestead assessment cap from 10 percent to 5 percent.

What the amendment would not do is change the reset itself. Save Our Homes, the base-year mechanic, and the portability cap are untouched. A buyer closing on a Miami home in 2027 would still start from full just value in year one, just with more of that value shielded from non-school taxes than a buyer would have had under today's rules. Legislative analysts have estimated the change would cut non-school local government revenue by roughly $4.6 billion in the first year, growing to about $8.4 billion annually, a detail that matters less for a single buyer's bill and more for anyone weighing whether city and county services in a given Miami neighborhood might shift in response over time.

There is one more wrinkle specific to relocating buyers. Under the ballot language, a person who was not already a Florida resident as of December 31, 2026 would receive the current, smaller exemption when they first qualify, with the larger exemption only phasing in starting their fifth year of ownership. For someone moving to Miami from out of state this year or next, that means the amendment's headline numbers are not an immediate first-year benefit.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does buying a Miami home mean I inherit the seller's property tax bill? No. The county reassesses the property at full just value the January following a change in ownership, and the seller's accumulated Save Our Homes benefit does not transfer to a new, unrelated buyer.

If Amendment 3 passes in November, will my property taxes be eliminated? No. The measure raises the homestead exemption on non-school taxes to $150,000 in 2027 and $250,000 in 2028 if approved by 60 percent of voters. School taxes, which are typically the largest single line on a Miami-Dade tax bill, are not affected.

Can I bring my old Save Our Homes savings from another Florida home into a new Miami purchase? Yes, through portability, but only up to $500,000 of the accumulated assessment difference, and only if you apply within three tax years of selling your prior homestead.

Does the assessment cap apply to a condo I plan to rent out or use seasonally? No. The Save Our Homes cap only applies to a primary residence with a homestead exemption. Non-homestead property, including seasonal and investment units, is assessed at full market value each year subject to a separate cap, currently 10 percent annually and proposed to drop to 5 percent under the November ballot measure.

Whether you're comparing a resale condo in Edgewater to a bungalow in Coral Gables, the number that should decide the offer is your modeled first-year tax bill, not the one printed on the seller's disclosure. The Bespoke Group runs that math with clients before an offer goes in, using the property's current assessed value, its just value, and your own homestead timeline, so the figure on your closing statement is one you've already seen.