Law Topics · Housing & Property

The Florida Homestead Exemption

In Florida, “homestead” is one word that does three completely different jobs. Before you read on, figure out which one brought you here — the rules, deadlines, and dollar amounts are not the same.

All three protections come from the same place: the Florida Constitution. A home you own and live in as your permanent residence is your homestead, and that single status carries a tax discount, a powerful shield against creditors, and limits on how you can give the home away when you die. The confusion comes from the fact that people use one word for all three. This page walks through each in plain language.

1. The property-tax homestead exemption

This is what most people mean by “the homestead exemption.” If you own a home in Florida and it’s your permanent residence, you can knock up to $50,000 off the home’s assessed (taxable) value before your property taxes are calculated.

The $50,000 comes in two layers:

• The first $25,000 applies to all property taxes, including school taxes.
• A second $25,000 applies to the assessed value between $50,000 and $75,000 — but not to school-district taxes.

So a home assessed at $75,000 or more gets the full $50,000 reduction (with a slightly smaller break on the school portion of the bill).

Who qualifies

• You own the property and it is your permanent residence (not a rental, vacation home, or investment property).
• You lived there as your permanent home on January 1 of the tax year.
• You can show Florida residency — typically a Florida driver’s license, voter registration, and vehicle registration at that address.

How and when to apply

You apply once, through your county property appraiser, using Form DR-501. After that it renews automatically each year as long as you still qualify. The deadline to claim it for the current tax year is March 1. Miss it, and you wait until the next year.

Save Our Homes — the part that saves you the most

Once your homestead is in place, the Save Our Homes cap kicks in. It limits how much your home’s assessed value can rise each year to 3% or the change in the Consumer Price Index, whichever is lower. (For 2026, the CPI figure is about 2.7%.) In a rising market, this is where the real money is: long-time owners often pay taxes on an assessed value far below what their home would sell for today.

Portability — taking your savings with you

When you sell and buy another Florida home, you don’t lose all those accumulated Save Our Homes savings. You can transfer (“port”) up to $500,000 of the savings to your new homestead using Form DR-501T. You generally must establish the new homestead within three tax years of leaving the old one. Married couples can each carry their own portability.

Extra exemptions that stack on top

Depending on your county and your circumstances, you may add further reductions — for example, an additional senior exemption of up to $50,000 for homeowners 65 and older whose household income is below roughly $37,000 (the threshold is adjusted yearly), plus separate exemptions for veterans, widows and widowers, and people with disabilities. Your county property appraiser can tell you which local exemptions apply.

2. Homestead protection from creditors

This is the famous one — and it has nothing to do with your tax bill. Under Article X, Section 4 of the Florida Constitution, your homestead generally cannot be taken and sold by creditors to satisfy a debt or court judgment. Unlike most states, Florida puts no dollar limit on the value protected. A modest house and a multimillion-dollar estate receive the same shield.

The size limits

The protection covers your residence and the land it sits on, up to:

• Half an acre if the home is inside a city or town, or
• 160 contiguous acres if it’s outside municipal limits.

The three big exceptions

The shield is strong, but not absolute. You can still lose the home to:

1. Your mortgage lender, if you don’t pay the mortgage.
2. The government, for unpaid property taxes.
3. Contractors or laborers who worked on the property and weren’t paid (construction and mechanic’s liens).

Homeowners’ association and condominium liens can also reach the property under Florida law.

Homestead in bankruptcy — an important federal catch

Florida’s protection is generous, but federal bankruptcy law adds a limit aimed at people who move to Florida and pour money into a house right before filing. Under 11 U.S.C. § 522(p), if you acquired your home within 1,215 days (about 40 months) before filing, you can protect only up to $214,000 of that recently acquired equity (the figure applies to cases filed between April 1, 2025 and March 31, 2028). Equity rolled over from a prior Florida home you owned before that window generally doesn’t count against the cap.

3. What homestead means when you die

Here’s the part that surprises people: in Florida you cannot freely leave your homestead to whomever you want if you have a surviving spouse or minor children. The same constitutional provision that protects your home from creditors also restricts how it can be passed on.

• If you leave a spouse and descendants, you generally cannot give the home to anyone else. The home passes to them under Florida law — the surviving spouse takes a life estate, with the children receiving the remainder, or the spouse may elect a one-half interest instead, with the other half going to the descendants.
• If you have minor children, you generally cannot will the homestead away from them at all.
• If you have no spouse and no minor children, you may leave the homestead freely.

A will or trust that tries to violate these limits is simply void as to the homestead, and the home passes under Florida’s statutory rules (Florida Statutes § 732.401) instead. The upside: because the homestead usually passes outside the probate estate, it generally can’t be sold to pay the deceased owner’s debts — the creditor protection carries through to the heirs.

The three homesteads, side by side

Common questions

Last reviewed: June 2026  ·  Topic: Housing & Property / Bankruptcy / Estate Planning

This article from JusticeXpress Florida explains the law in general terms and is not legal advice. Laws change, and how they apply depends on your specific facts. For advice about your situation, consult a licensed Florida attorney or your county property appraiser.