How the Save Our Homes cap follows you when you move…

If you’ve owned a homesteaded property in Florida for more than a few years, you’ve probably benefited from the state’s “Save Our Homes” cap without fully realizing it. Each year, while your home’s market value may have climbed with the broader real estate market, your assessed value — the number your property taxes are actually based on — has been limited to increases of no more than 3% annually. Over a decade or two, that gap between market value and assessed value can grow into real money. The catch has always been that this benefit was tied to the property, not the person. Sell your home, and the accumulated savings vanish — the new owner’s assessment resets to full market value, and if you buy another home in Florida, you would normally start over too. That’s where portability comes in to effect. As enabled by a constitutional amendment in 2008, portability lets homeowners transfer some or all of the accumulated Save Our Homes benefit to a new Florida homestead. Rather than losing years of capped growth the moment you sell, you carry the dollar value of that benefit — up to $500,000 — to your next home.

Filing the paperwork: The process isn’t automatic. Homeowners have to file a portability application (Form DR-501T) with their new county’s property appraiser by March 1, typically at the same time they apply for homestead exemption on the new property. There’s also a time limit: the new homestead must be established within three tax years of abandoning the old one, or the portability window closes.

Upsizing vs. Downsizing

The math depends on whether you’re moving up or down in home value:

• Upsizing — if your new home’s market value is equal to or greater than your old one, you can transfer your full accumulated benefit, subject to the $500,000 cap.
• Downsizing — if you’re moving to a less expensive home, you can only port a proportional share of the benefit relative to the value of the new home.
• Joint ownership — spouses who owned the prior home together generally split the portable benefit 50/50 if they go on to establish separate new homesteads.

Why it matters: For long-time Florida homeowners, portability can mean tens of thousands of dollars in tax savings over the life of a new mortgage — reason enough to make sure the paperwork doesn’t fall through the cracks during a move.

Florida’s property tax rules are also the subject of active 2026 ballot proposals that could adjust reassessment frequency and cap sizes, but any changes would require voter approval in November 2026 and wouldn’t take effect until 2027 — so today’s portability rules remain the ones in play. Call Weiss LLP for more information.