Take your tax break with you.
If you already own a Florida home, you have likely built up a Save Our Homes discount worth real money. Move to your next home and you can carry it with you. Most people never claim it.
Your capped taxes are portable.
Florida's Save Our Homes cap holds a homesteaded owner's assessed value to 3% growth a year, so after a few years your taxable value sits well below what the home is actually worth. That gap is your Save Our Homes benefit, and it is often tens of thousands of dollars.
When you sell and buy another Florida home, you can transfer that gap to the new place, up to $500,000, so your new tax bill starts far lower than a fresh buyer's would. Upsizing carries the full benefit. Downsizing carries a proportional share.
The catch: it is not automatic. You file a form (DR-501T) with your new homestead, within 3 tax years of your last one. Miss it and you hand the county thousands. This is the first thing I check for a move-up or move-down client.
This is your capped assessed value, found on your TRIM notice or at bcpao.us. It is usually well below market value, that gap is the whole point.
Estimate only. Uses the flat $51,411 homestead exemption (2026 figure) and your entered effective rate; actual millage, the split between school and non-school taxes, and your county's assessment all affect the real figure. Portability math and the $500K cap follow Fla. Stat. 193.155. Confirm your exact numbers with the Brevard County Property Appraiser and file DR-501T on time.
Download My Breakdown (PDF) Or Email Myself a CopyPortability, decoded.
Upsizing carries the whole benefit
Buy a home worth as much or more than your current one and you transfer your entire Save Our Homes gap, up to the $500,000 cap. Your new assessed value starts that much below market, and your 3% cap keeps protecting you from day one.
Downsizing carries a share
Move to a less expensive home and you keep a proportional slice of the benefit, the ratio of the new value to the old. Still real money, and still worth filing for. This tool does that math for you above.
You have 3 years, and a form to file
The clock runs 3 tax years from January 1 of your last homestead year, not from your closing date, so a late-year sale can shorten it. You claim it with form DR-501T alongside your new homestead application. It is the easiest thousands you will ever leave on the table by forgetting.
Moving up or down the Space Coast?
Send me your current address and your next target. I will pull your real assessed value, run your portability, and make sure the paperwork gets filed on time. No pressure.