What does Florida's Amendment 3 do to the homestead exemption, and what changes at a closing?

In one line of one document. A Florida closing turns on six pieces of paper, and the amendment changes the figure on one of them, after the closing:

The rest of this page takes those in turn, after what the amendment says and whether it passed.

Four things, all in the enrolled joint resolution, CS/HJR 1F, which amends sections 4, 6 and 9 of article VII of the Florida Constitution and adds a section to article XII:

The new section of article XII says the amendments "shall take effect January 1, 2027". The figures before the amendment are those of Fla. Stat. § 196.031(1); the second exemption's 2026 amount is the Department of Revenue's published adjustment, $26,411 for 2026 after $25,722 in 2025.

Yes. The Division of Elections' count on the morning after the vote was 4,890,646 for and 2,994,408 against, 62.02% to 37.98% (Florida Election Watch, read 4 November 2026). A proposed amendment passes with the approval of 60% of those voting on it (Fla. Const. art. XI, § 5(e)). That count is the election night one, labelled unofficial; the state's certification follows it, and does not change the result.

The question on the ballot was titled "Increased Homestead Exemption; Lower Cap on Increases in Non-Homestead Property Assessments". That was not the Legislature's title. The resolution's own ballot statement, "Save Our Homes From Excessive Property Taxes", was found misleading by a Leon County circuit judge on 3 August 2026, and the Attorney General rewrote the title and summary (WLRN, 4 August 2026). The text of the amendment itself was not changed.

The amendment is written in exemption amounts, and an exemption is subtracted from assessed value before the millage is applied. So the clearest way to see it is the taxable value of one house for levies other than school district levies, under each set of rules. No millage is applied here, because millage is set each year by each county, city and district; this is the value the rate is multiplied by.

Read across a row and the amendment is the difference between the columns; read down the last two and it is the four-year gap between a buyer who was here by the end of 2026 and one who was not. For school district levies every column is the same: the assessed value less $25,000.

The arithmetic: the 2026 column takes $25,000 off, and $26,411 more off value above $50,000 (§ 196.031(1)(a) and (b), with the Department's 2026 figure). The 2027 and 2028 columns take $150,000 and $250,000 off, and the last takes $50,000 off, each "up to the assessed valuation" named in the new article VII, section 6, which is why the $200,000 house in 2028 is taxed on nothing for non-school levies. The assessed value is after the Save Our Homes cap, which the amendment leaves alone, and a buyer's assessed value in the first year is just value. Assessments for special benefits are outside every exemption.

One thing the table shows that the ballot did not: for 2027, a new resident's flat $50,000 is $1,411 less than the $51,411 a 2026 owner of a home worth $76,411 or more already had. The $50,000 is indexed from 2028.

The amendment writes two exemptions into article VII, section 6, and the line between them is where a person lived on 31 December 2026, not when they bought.

Owners who were Florida residents by the end of 2026. Every person with legal or equitable title who maintains their permanent residence on the property is exempt, for levies other than school district levies, "beginning on January 1, 2027, up to the assessed valuation of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars" and "beginning on January 1, 2028, up to the assessed valuation of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars". The $250,000 is adjusted each year for inflation from 1 January 2029, using the Consumer Price Index, in years when the change is positive.

Everyone else. A person who, on or after 1 January 2027, holds title and lives on the property, "who had not maintained a permanent residence in this state as of December 31, 2026", is exempt up to $25,000 for school levies and up to $50,000 for the rest. The $50,000 is indexed from 1 January 2028. "Beginning with the fifth year of exemption under this subparagraph", the person is exempt up to the full amount.

Two things follow for a buyer:

• A buyer moving to Florida in 2027 who closes and applies in time gets the $50,000 exemption on the 2028 roll, and the full amount from the fifth year of the exemption. The amendment counts years of exemption, not years of ownership.
• The test is residence in the state, not ownership of a previous home. The amendment does not say how a property appraiser is to establish where a person lived on 31 December 2026; it directs the Legislature to "prescribe uniform procedures to administer this subparagraph", and until that law is written the procedure is not known. Residency itself is already a fact-based decision for the property appraiser, under the factors in Fla. Stat. § 196.015.

From 1 January 2030, a county or city may, by a two-thirds vote of its governing body, decide "that a reduction of the five-year requirement ... is warranted for a critical local need", for its own levies. A closing agent cannot promise a buyer that any county will.

The same thing that happens today. The amendment changes the size of the exemption, not the rules for keeping or losing it.

• The seller's exemption ends with the sale. The homestead exemption belongs to the person, for the home they live in on 1 January. The Save Our Homes assessment cap ends with a change of ownership: the property "shall be assessed at just value as of January 1 of the year following a change of ownership" (Fla. Stat. § 193.155(3)(a)), with exceptions for transfers between spouses, to a surviving spouse or minor child, and the like.
• The buyer applies for their own. An application is filed with the county property appraiser "on or before March 1 of each year", and a failure to apply by then "shall constitute a waiver of the exemption privilege for that year" (Fla. Stat. § 196.011(1)(a)), subject to the late-filing provision in subsection (9). Once granted, it renews each year unless the appraiser denies it (subsection (7)). The exemption is applied for by the owner. It is not part of the closing, and nothing we record creates it.
• Portability is unchanged. A seller who had a homestead exemption as of 1 January of any of the three preceding years may carry the difference between the old home's just and assessed values to the new one, up to $500,000 (Fla. Stat. § 193.155(8)). The amendment's title lists what it revises: the assessment limitation for "specified real property", the exemption, and local spending. The portability provision in section 4(d) is not among them.

So the seller's column and the buyer's column in the table above can be four columns apart on the same house: a seller with the $250,000 exemption and a long-held cap, a buyer new to Florida with $50,000 and a fresh assessment at just value. That has always been true in Florida. The amendment makes the gap larger.

Less than people expect, because the proration divides the seller's year, not the buyer's.

Under Standard K of the Florida Realtors/Florida Bar contract, taxes are prorated as of the day before closing on the current year's tax, or, before it is known, on the year's assessment at the prior year's millage once the assessment is out, and on the prior year's tax before that, with due allowance for the maximum discount (Standard K; the seller net sheet works it the same way). The number being divided is the bill on the seller's exemptions and the seller's cap. The buyer's own bill, on just value less the buyer's own exemptions, arrives the following November and is nobody's business at the closing table.

By closing date:

Taxes are "due and payable on November 1 of each year" (Fla. Stat. § 197.333), which is why the bill changes what is divided each November. The buyer's application date follows from the rule that the exemption is for the home lived in on 1 January: a buyer who closes in 2027 lives there on 1 January 2028 and applies by 1 March 2028.

What the buyer will pay is a question for the county property appraiser's estimator, worked from the purchase price and the exemption the buyer will qualify for, and a Realtor should send a buyer there rather than to the seller's bill.

No. "Homestead" means three different things in Florida, and the amendment reaches two of them:

The third is the one a title agent lives with. A married owner sells or mortgages homestead "joined by the spouse if married", including a spouse whose name is not on the deed, and a judgment is not a lien on homestead except for taxes and assessments on it, its purchase, improvement or repair, and labor on it. Neither rule is in the resolution. Homestead and the spouse who is not on the deed and a judgment against the seller explain each, and both are as true after 1 January 2027 as before.

Yes, and it is a title matter, because it is recorded. When a person was granted a homestead exemption they were not entitled to for any year within the prior 10, the property appraiser serves notice of intent to record a lien, and the property "shall be subject to the taxes exempted thereby, plus a penalty of 50 percent of the unpaid taxes for each year and 15 percent interest per annum" (Fla. Stat. § 196.161(1)(b)). The owner has 30 days to pay first.

The lien "shall not attach to the property until the notice of tax lien is filed among the public records of the county", and before it is filed "any purchaser for value of the subject property shall take free and clear of such lien" (subsection (3)). A recorded notice is found by the title search and is paid from the seller's side, like any other lien on the property; one recorded after the buyer takes title is the former owner's problem, not the property's.

Put the table above beside the statute: on a $600,000 house, a 2028 exemption claimed by someone not entitled to it is $250,000 of taxable value a year for every non-school levy, and the penalty is half the tax on it, plus interest, for up to 10 years. The residency test also creates a new way for an exemption to be wrongly claimed. Expect the statute to be revisited when the implementing law is written.

Nothing in the amendment applies to it except the lower cap. Non-homestead residential property and nonresidential property are reassessed each year for levies other than school district levies, and the increase may not exceed "a. Before January 1, 2027, ten percent (10%). b. Beginning January 1, 2027, five percent (5%)" of the prior year's assessment (Art. VII, § 4(g) and (h), as amended).

The cap runs from the assessment the buyer starts with, and that starts at just value: non-homestead property is reassessed at just value on the 1 January after a change of ownership (House final bill analysis, citing art. VII, § 4(g)(3) and (h)(4) and Fla. Stat. §§ 193.1554(5) and 193.1555(5)). The 5% limits what happens from the second year on. School district levies are outside both caps.

• Certification of the vote, by the state, which follows the election night count.
• Implementing law. The amendment directs the Legislature to prescribe "uniform procedures" for the new-resident exemption and a "uniform procedure" for counties and cities to raise the exempt amount, by their own levies, "up to all remaining assessed valuation". Special districts may raise theirs by referendum. None of that exists yet, and none of it is needed for the $150,000 to apply on the 2027 roll: the amounts are in the Constitution itself.
• The Department of Revenue's indexing. The $50,000 is adjusted from 2028 and the $250,000 from 2029, in the same way the second $25,000 has been since 2025.

When a property appraiser denies the exemption or the residency date, when a notice of intent to record a lien arrives, when an estate or a trust holds the home, or when the question is which spouse or heir is entitled to what. Each turns on facts the closing agent does not decide, and on a statute the Legislature is about to amend, so a Florida real estate or tax attorney should be reading the file.