Caption transcript. This text is pulled from YouTube captions and may contain minor wording errors.
[00:01] Hey, I just wanted to do an extremely boring video on property taxes here in Florida. So, if you're buying a house for the first time or you're buying you're selling it and buying a new one and you're porting over your Florida homestead exemption, I'll explain how that works and how you will benefit from
[00:14] it because it will lower your taxes substantially. So, stick around. Here we have a property. Uh I'm not really trying to share the address or really hide it that much, but I wanted to show you what these three things mean here cuz anybody can pull up public records like this for any property. Um
[00:30] here you can see uh over the last 5 years where the just market value here and how the you know everything goes up, right? Um especially in this recent market. So there's the just market value which is what the county appraiser thinks the fair market value of your home is, right? And usually that's not
[00:50] truly what it really is. They're estimating low. If you go down and you see the total assessed value, that's your that's basically what they they have assessed your property to be. It's like the starting point for taxes, right? So they're not taxing you off of 463. They would be taxing you off of
[01:07] 228. However, um if you have a homestead exemption, which this one does, they marked it yes. They've gone through the application which is due March 1st, 2026. every year March 1st get it done if it's your primary um they have total exemptions so you can see um somehow it changed so some exemptions were added um
[01:28] but right now in 2025 there's a 60,000 so what you're doing to figure out the actual taxable value of your house you are going to do uh basically uh the total assessed minus your exemptions which equals you know 228 minus 60 is the 167 and so that is what the taxes will based off for that year.
[01:51] Now, that's great if you're buying a house for the first time. That's how that works. Um, now let's see. Let me show you how to assess taxes yourself. This is in Pasco County. So, we're going to go over to Pasco County. And let's just say you're buying this house now for $575,000.
[02:07] Um, and be so you can see how 463 is what the county has assessed as fair market value, but you can see the fair market value is actually much much closer to 575. So that's already low. Um, so if we go to calculate, we're going to go down and we will see almost $10,000 a year in taxes, right?
[02:32] So or actually I'm sorry um that is for the uh the ad fellow room taxes. So if you go to the total it's almost yeah it is 10,000 basically. So once you factor in your trash and sewage and all that stuff. Um, now let's factor in if you have a homestead exemption
[02:50] and that'll take off if you're married, it'll take off um about $50,000 and that yeah, I mean it it reduces your taxes by almost $1,000 a year, which it's not that much, but you know, it helps, I guess. Now, the the real benefit of when you buy a house and you had it for a while, you are capped at a
[03:09] 3% increase a year when you are um when you had the homestead exemption. So, if your property like the last 5 years went up 15 to 20% each year for a couple years, um you're still like way back here and taxes if you bought again would would be right over here. So, if you want to save this difference and and the
[03:31] the tax valuation of of your next property, like you're selling and when you buy another property, your taxes will get reassessed on purchase starting January 1st the following year. So if you want to save the difference, what you do have to do portability, right? So you you click the portability button.
[03:46] Let's say your just value, which is uh this right here, the market value is uh I'm putting down here just a different number, but let's let's say you're selling a house, your old home, and its value is 365, but its taxable value, which is right here, or total assessed value. See, all these terms,
[04:08] they they really throw you off. your total assessed value, which is what is the starting point for taxes, is 235. Um, and we check that. And now let's calculate it. And now it reduces your taxes down to $7,000. That saves you over $2,000
[04:30] a year from porting over your old homestead exemption. So, um, owning property early on, letting prices rise, it'll save you over you can you can capture that tax savings and port it over. And a lot of people know that, some people don't. So, I wanted to throw that out there. Now, if you're an
[04:49] investor, um, you don't get the homestead exemption. So, if you're an investor, you don't have the 3% cap. You don't have the homestead exemption. and the the 3% cap each year. It's like, you know, if your home jumps up in value by 20%, you're not going to be paying extra 20% in
[05:06] taxes the following year. You'll pay 3% cap. If you're an investor, you don't have that. So, every single year, you can pay the full market valuation uh uh of taxes and it can it can move with that every single year. Now, if you're an investor, uh there is a cap, but it's 10%. So unless you're going through some
[05:24] extremely upside like bull market scenarios like we did with COVID where it went up 15 to 20% a year, you're paying up to 10% increase per year or I should say the cap is 10%. So over the course of 3 years, you're right back to where market value is and and uh you know you don't have the portability
[05:42] feature as well for any any investment home or second home. So just keep that in mind. Your taxes will basically be market rate every single year. This is why I tell people not to look at what the sellers are paying in taxes because it's almost never what you're going to be paying. If you're an investor, you
[05:57] are like 99% of the time going to be paying more than what they're paying. And if you're a homeowner who's looking to move there and you you have another home, you're porting over your your your tax savings essentially, then you'll likely be paying far less. But it's almost never what they're paying. And
[06:11] it's it's kind of deceiving to look at what they're paying and be like, "Oh, okay. My taxes are pretty low with this property, but three doors down it's way higher." Well, now you know why. Um, some people pay more, some people pay less. Depends on where they come from, what their percent cap is, and when they
[06:26] bought the property. If you bought the property 20 years ago, you're I don't know, your taxes 3% a year, you can be really low. But a property that was just purchased recently has been reassessed recently. Even with the exemptions and um porting over some savings, it's still going to be higher than, you know,
[06:43] probably what the last person was paying. So, after all of this, does any of it even matter? Because in 2026, the next vote in Florida, there's going to be a question on the ballot. And we don't know exactly what that question is going to be. Santez, in some recent news, has indicated that it's going to
[07:01] be [gasps] a question to basically entirely remove property taxes for those with homestead exemptions only. Now, I don't know exactly if that's what it is, if it's confirmed, if it'll look different, if it's just cuts, but um or if there'll be multiple proposals. Hopefully, there
[07:19] will just be one because multiple proposals would basically confiscate everything and confuse everybody and we'll probably get nowhere. But anyway, all that being said, uh if this does pass, we need 60% in Florida to to to be a super majority to to pass it. [snorts] And then depending on what it actually
[07:38] is, uh it will likely only apply to primary homeowners or primary occupants, um locals here in Florida, anybody with a um um homestead exemption. So that means investors, second homeowners, that won't apply to your property, unfortunately. >> [music]
