Florida Homestead Exemption | What is Homestead Exemption?
Broward County – Fort Lauderdale
What is Florida Homestead Exemption and what other exemptions am I entitled to?
Homestead exemption in Florida is really a discount for property owners that live and make their home in Florida. All legal Florida residents are eligible for homestead exemption on their homes, condos, co-ops and certain mobile home lots if they qualify. By Florida law, this tax savings is on the first and third $25,000 of the assessed value of the owner occupied property, totaling a $50,000 reduction in the assessed value. According to the Broward County Property Appraiser, the annual tax savings for property owners range from $648 to $1,147 for properties valued over $75,000. The second $25,000 is only applied to the non-school items of our tax bill. There’s actually a pretty complicated formula to determine your final exemption based on the value of your home.
Florida Homestead is just one of the exemptions available to home owners. Other exemptions include: Disability exemptions, Low-Income Senior exemption, Deployed Military exemption and others. Other Property Tax Exemptions.
Filling for Homestead Exemption: Property owners have until March 2 of each year to file for homestead. This can be done online or in person for the 1st year. Each year after that, it will be renewed automatically until you sell the property. You have to own the property on January 1st of the year you are filling, so if you were to close on your property on November 1st of 2016 then you would be eligible for homestead exemption in the year 2017 and would have to file for the exemption by March 2nd of 2017. You can actually file later than that if needed, but that is not preferred by Broward County.
Example 2: If you were to buy and close on your property on August 1, 2016 then you would NOT be eligible for homestead exemption until 2017 and must file before March 2nd, 2017.
Our tax bills do not come out until November of each year, so you would not see the change in the assessed value until then.
To file ON-LINE for Broward County Homestead exemption.
For more detailed information on the homestead exemption and other exemptions available,
please see the Broward County property appraisers website.