What is the Save Our Homes cap in Florida?

How does the cap work?

Section 193.155 limits each year's increase in a homestead's assessed value to the lower of 3% of the prior year's assessed value or the percentage change in the Consumer Price Index for the preceding calendar year. The cap was 2.9% for 2025, according to the Palm Beach County Property Appraiser, and is 2.7% for 2026, according to the Broward County Property Appraiser.

The cap applies to assessed value, not market value. Assessed value can never exceed just (market) value, and exemptions are subtracted from assessed value to get taxable value. In the first year you receive homestead, the home is assessed at just value; the cap protects it starting the following year.

If market values dip but your capped value is still below market value, your assessed value can keep rising by up to the cap each year until it catches up, which Broward's property appraiser calls the recapture rule.[1][3][4]

What resets or adds to the capped value?

The cap stays with you and the property only while nothing changes. These events matter:

• Sale or other change of ownership: the home is reassessed at just value as of January 1 of the following year.
• Transfers between spouses, including to a surviving spouse or in a divorce, generally are not treated as a change of ownership.
• Improvements and additions: assessed at just value as of the first January 1 after they are substantially completed.
• Refinancing: does not trigger reassessment or reset the cap, according to the Broward County Property Appraiser.
• Moving: the cap itself does not move, but portability can transfer up to $500,000 of the accumulated benefit to a new Florida homestead.[1][3]

How are second homes and rentals capped?

Non-homestead residential property with nine or fewer units has a different limit: its assessed value for non-school taxes can rise no more than 10% a year. The cap applies automatically, but school taxes are not capped, and the cap resets after a change of ownership or control.

One consequence: when an owner homesteads a property that had been under the 10% cap, the Palm Beach County Property Appraiser says the assessed value resets to market value first, then the homestead exemption is applied and the 3% cap begins the following year. The office asks owners in that situation to contact it before filing.[2][4][5][6]