{"id":292860,"date":"2026-06-02T09:22:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T09:22:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/292860\/"},"modified":"2026-06-02T09:22:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T09:22:13","slug":"florida-homebuyers-can-face-property-tax-sticker-shock-after-purchase-heres-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/292860\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida homebuyers can face property tax \u2018sticker shock\u2019 after purchase. Here\u2019s why"},"content":{"rendered":"

ORLANDO, Fla. \u2013 Hundreds of people move to Florida every day, and while Florida\u2019s real estate market may not be as hot as it once was, housing prices in Central Florida, at least, are still higher than they should be, according to housing experts.<\/a><\/p>\n

If you\u2019re in the market for a new home in Florida, property taxes may be one factor in what you buy. If it is, be warned: the price you see on real estate websites like Zillow or Realtor.com is not necessarily the price you\u2019ll pay.<\/p>\n

The reason? Florida\u2019s homestead exemption laws.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow many people realize the homestead exemption exists? Because folks are coming from everywhere, all over the world,\u201d said Orange County Property Appraiser Amy Mercado. \u201cHomestead doesn\u2019t exist in certain jurisdictions, right, in countries, and so it is a constant educational process for our office; all of our outreach always includes some level of homestead education because they don\u2019t realize it even exists. Even from, you know, state to state, they don\u2019t handle it the same way. They don\u2019t offer the same things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Florida\u2019s homestead rules exempt portions of a residential property\u2019s value, which in turn reduces the tax bill.<\/p>\n

Say a house has an assessed value of $100,000. In Florida, the property is taxed like this:<\/p>\n

First $25,000 \u2013 tax-exempt (first exemption)<\/p>\n

$25,000-$50,000 \u2013 taxed<\/p>\n

$50,000-$75,000 – exempt from all ad valorem taxes except school taxes (second exemption)<\/p>\n

$75,000-$100,000 – taxed<\/p>\n

All property values after that $100,000 would also be taxed unless you qualify for another exemption. There are exemptions for active duty military members and veterans, for people 65 and older, for people with certain disabilities, and for surviving spouses of a first responder who died in the line of duty. You can find all the exemptions on the Florida Department of Revenue website HERE.<\/a><\/p>\n

Florida also has a homestead exemption rule known as Save Our Homes. This caps a property appraiser\u2019s assessment of a home at a 3% increase in value, or the percent change in the Consumer Price Index, whichever is less. <\/p>\n

It also allows people who have lived in a home for a long time and want to move to take the savings from the homestead exemption with them to a new home, allowing them to lower their tax assessment.<\/p>\n

What happens to the taxes on the house you\u2019re leaving? They get reset to current-day market value, according to Mercado.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, for example, if you live in your home for 10 years, you bought it for $100,000, you then live in it for the 10 years, and it\u2019s worth $300,000,\u201d Mercado said. \u201cThe savings between your market and your assessed value for those 10 years, you have the opportunity to take with you. The person that buys your home doesn\u2019t pay the (tax) rate that you\u2019re paying. You may be at $1,000\u2026 a year in taxes because of the years you\u2019ve been in it. You bought it at $100,000, and it slowly progressed. That person is going to pay on the $300,000 mark because it resets as soon as you sell.”<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s head to Zillow.com and break this down. <\/p>\n

A home near News 6, on Lake Orlando Parkway, sold in 2025 for $535,000.<\/p>\n

A home that sold in Orlando in 2025, according to Zillow.com. (Copyright 2026 by WKMG ClickOrlando – All rights reserved.)<\/p>\n

According to Zillow<\/a>, the home\u2019s property taxes in 2024 were $4,108. This matches the publicly available data on this house on the Orange County Property Appraiser\u2019s website<\/a>, indicating the person who bought the house had a homestead exemption from a previous property.<\/p>\n

A home that sold in Orlando in 2025, according to Zillow.com. (Copyright 2026 by WKMG ClickOrlando – All rights reserved.)<\/p>\n

However, if you were to buy that house now, without a homestead exemption that you are transferring from another house? Your property taxes would be way more. <\/p>\n

According to the Tax Estimator Tool on the property appraiser\u2019s website, if you were to buy this same property today for $535,000 and apply for a new homestead exemption, your total tax bill is estimated to be $8,225.96 to $9,194.46. <\/p>\n

Try it for yourself HERE.<\/a> It\u2019s free.<\/p>\n

Estimated property tax bill for the home if bought by someone filing for a homestead exemption for the first time, according to the Orange County Property Appraiser’s tax estimator. (Copyright 2026 by WKMG ClickOrlando – All rights reserved.)<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat (the seller is) getting in their documentation, and it\u2019s being disclosed appropriately, is based on the persons that are living in the property. So it\u2019s not an apples-to-apples comparison,\u201d Mercado said.<\/p>\n

But that leads to a shock for a new homeowner, and a lot of frustration often directed at the property appraiser\u2019s office.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen they receive their first tax bill after the sale, with their reset rate, it\u2019s at the current market value. And it could be a significant jump, right? It can be thousands of dollars that you\u2019re not expecting, that you are not budgeting for,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Mercado says anyone looking to buy in Florida needs to find the property appraiser\u2019s website for the property\u2019s county. Every website has the same tax estimator tool that Orange County has. <\/p>\n

Florida\u2019s Department of Revenue website has a tool to help you find the right property appraiser HERE.<\/a><\/p>\n

A bill in the Florida Legislature set out to address this issue. SB 856<\/a> would have prohibited online listing sites from using a current owner\u2019s tax information, instead requiring the sites to calculate estimated property taxes with other methods. <\/p>\n

The bill passed in the Florida Senate but never made it through the Florida House.<\/p>\n

Breaking News Alerts<\/p>\n

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Copyright 2026 by WKMG ClickOrlando – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. \u2013 Hundreds of people move to Florida every day, and while Florida\u2019s real estate market may…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":154783,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29,2161,37754,14559,1335,7074],"class_list":["post-292860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-government","tag-homeownership","tag-homestead-exemption","tag-orange-county","tag-property-taxes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292860\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}