Will My Property Taxes Triple If I Move? (Usually, No.)

Here's how it sounds on one side of the kitchen table:

And here's how it sounds on the other side of the table:

Everyone is assuming, but no-one has really checked.

Would you believe that this is a very common reason a Gainesville homeowner thinks they can't move? It's actually one of the few objections in this entire business that has an actual answer, with a formula, in a state statute, that you can run yourself on a legal pad, or Excel if you like a good spreadsheet. Wink.

Usually the answer is no. Fairly often the answer is your taxable value goes down.

You've been in the house since 1979 when the Gators went 0-10-1, and somewhere along the way you got used to two numbers that have almost nothing to do with each other.

There's what the house is worth, which has done what Gainesville real estate has done over forty-odd years — (We actually know that homes in Gainesville have appreciated 82% in just the last 20 years!) And there's what you're taxed on, which has been crawling along behind it, because Save Our Homes caps how much the assessed value of a homesteaded property can go up: 3% a year, or the change in the cost-of-living index, whichever is smaller.

Forty years of that and the two numbers are in different area codes. Your neighbor who bought in 2023 is paying a tax bill that would make you put it in a file cabinet and turn on Netflix.

This means that when you imagine moving, you imagine the obvious thing: the new place gets assessed at what you paid for it, the whole enchilada, and your bill lands somewhere near what that neighbor is paying. Of course that sounds like tripling. If that were how it worked, you'd be right to stay put.

It isn't how it works. It stopped being how it works in 2008, and lots of people in the “seasoned” age bracket haven't heard.

Florida calls it portability, and it is exactly what it sounds like.

That gap you've accumulated — the difference between what your house is worth and what you're assessed on — is called your Save Our Homes benefit. It isn't attached to the house. It's attached to you. When you sell and buy another Florida homestead, you take it with you.

The rules, plainly:

• Up to $500,000 of accumulated benefit transfers to your new Florida homestead.

• You have up to three consecutive tax years to establish the new homestead after you leave the old one. It's counted in tax years, not calendar months, so a late-year sale can squeeze that closer to two. Don't let the window run out — this is the one piece of this where the clock is real.

• If you buy something worth more than what you sold, the full benefit moves, up to that $500,000 cap.

• If you buy something worth less — which is the whole point, for most people reading this — you transfer a proportional share. Your old benefit, multiplied by the new home's value divided by the old home's value.

• It is not automatic. You file form DR-501T along with your homestead application DR-501, by March 1. Nobody will chase you about this. (Well, I'll probably chase you a little bit.) If you don't file it, you don't get it.

That fourth bullet is the kicker: downsizing does not move your whole benefit. Anyone who says it does is either selling you something or hasn't read it.

But run it out and see where it lands anyway.

These are made-up numbers for illustration — not your house, so don't quote me or my dad will haunt me from the Great Beyond.

Say the house is worth $420,000 today, and you're assessed at $165,000, because you've been there since the Carter administration. Your accumulated benefit is $255,000.

You buy a patio home in Blues Creek - The Cove for $280,000.

Downsizing, so it's proportional: $280,000 ÷ $420,000 = about 67%. Sixty-seven percent of $255,000 is roughly $170,000, and that's what moves with you.

New assessed value: $280,000 - $170,000 = $110,000. Then your homestead exemption comes off that.

Compare it to the version you've been picturing, where you get assessed on the full $280,000. That's a $170,000 difference in assessed value, every year, for the rest of the time you own the place.

And compare it to right now. You're currently assessed at $165,000. In this example you'd land at $110,000. Your taxable value goes down. Yep, I said what I said.

Now — the millage rate is different in different parts of the county, so the bill isn't a straight line from the assessed value, and your insurance is its own separate conversation. I'm not going to pretend one arithmetic problem settles this. But the direction is the opposite of what you've been assuming, and you might have been making a large decision on the assumption.

The 65+ additional exemption. If you're 65 or older with a homestead and your household adjusted gross income is under the annual limit — $38,686 for 2026 — there's an additional exemption of up to $50,000 on top of the regular homestead. Form DR-501SC, by March 1. It renews on its own as long as you stay under the limit. It's a local-option exemption, meaning the county and each city decide separately whether to offer it, so it's worth confirming for your specific address.

The long-term residency exemption, which almost nobody knows about: 65 or older, same income limit, in the same house 25 years or more, and the market value under $250,000 — and the assessed value comes off entirely.

Real talk: that $250,000 value cap means most of the houses I'm describing in this post won't qualify. If yours does, it is worth a phone call today, not in January. If it doesn't, it doesn't, and I'd rather you hear that from me than find out after you got your hopes up.

Just one thing...

Pull your TRIM notice — the one that says DO NOT PAY (be honest, is it the one that's in the pile on the counter?) — or if you're internet savvy, look your address up on the Property Appraiser's site at acpafl.org and pull it from there. Find two numbers: just/market value and assessed value.

Subtract, and that's your benefit. That's the number that's been quietly deciding this for you for two years while nobody looked at it.

You don't have to do anything with it. It's just better to know, don't you think?

I'll do it for your actual house.

Not an estimate off a website, not a range — your parcel, your assessed value, your benefit, and what the monthly cost would actually look like on a smaller place here with taxes and insurance in it. That's the question you're really asking, and it's a different question from what your house would sell for.

I'll hand you the page. You can put it in a drawer. That's a perfectly normal way to use it, and you can call me two years from now and I'll remember this conversation.

For anything official — whether a specific exemption applies to your address, what's on your record — the Alachua County Property Appraiser's office is the answer, not me and not a realtor's blog post. They're at acpafl.org and they're good about picking up the phone.

I've lived in Gainesville since 1972, and so far, I'm not going anywhere.