Florida Amendment 3: What Every Central Florida Homeowner and Buyer Needs to Know Before November 3
Florida voters head to the polls on November 3, 2026 with one of the most consequential property tax decisions in the state’s history on their ballot. Amendment 3 would dramatically increase the homestead exemption — potentially saving qualifying homeowners thousands of dollars per year — but research suggests it could also push home values higher, which raises a question worth examining honestly: would the savings survive the capitalization? Here is a straightforward breakdown of what Amendment 3 does, what the studies show about its effect on home values, and what it means for buyers, sellers, and longtime homeowners across Central Florida.
There is a conversation happening in every neighborhood in Central Florida right now — at dinner tables, on front porches, in real estate consultations — about whether to vote yes or no on Amendment 3.
The case for it is personal and visceral for a lot of families. You bought your home for $150,000 twenty-five years ago. You paid it off. You planned to live there for the rest of your life. And now the county’s assessed value has climbed to somewhere near a million dollars, your property tax bill has followed, and you are staring at a number that does not care what you earn, what you saved, or what you planned. For homeowners on fixed incomes — retirees, longtime residents who bought decades before prices ran — the property tax bill on a home they already own outright can reach $10,000, $12,000, $15,000 per year in some municipalities. It is not a small abstraction. It is a bill that, for some families, is forcing a genuine decision about whether they can afford to stay in the home they paid off, in the neighborhood where they raised their children, in the community where they planned to grow old.
Amendment 3 addresses that directly. It is not a complete solution — and we will get to the research that suggests it may not be as financially pure a benefit as the headline savings number implies — but it is a meaningful step toward a fundamental fairness question that Florida has not fully answered: should a government’s revenue from a homeowner’s property climb proportionally and indefinitely, based on assessed values the homeowner did not choose and cannot control, regardless of whether that homeowner’s income kept pace?
That is the question Amendment 3 asks voters to weigh. Here is the framework for making an informed decision.
What Amendment 3 Actually Does
Amendment 3 — officially titled “Increased Homestead Exemption; Lower Cap on Increases in Non-Homestead Property Assessments” — appears on the November 3, 2026 General Election ballot. It requires 60% voter approval to pass. If it does, changes take effect January 1, 2027.
The homestead exemption expansion: Under current Florida law, qualifying homestead property owners do not pay non-school property taxes on the first $50,000 of their home’s assessed value. Amendment 3 would expand that exemption dramatically — to $150,000 beginning January 1, 2027, and to $250,000 beginning January 1, 2028. Starting in 2029, the maximum exemption would be adjusted annually for inflation. The school millage exemption remains at $25,000, unchanged.
What this means in dollars: Florida’s average home value is approximately $378,000. At a combined non-school millage rate typical for Central Florida municipalities, moving the exemption from $50,000 to $250,000 translates to a meaningful annual tax reduction for qualifying homeowners — the specific savings varies by county and municipality based on local millage rates, but for homeowners in higher-millage areas the annual savings could be several thousand dollars per year.
The non-homestead cap: Amendment 3 also reduces the annual cap on assessed value increases for non-homestead properties — investment properties, commercial real estate, rentals — from 10% per year to 5% per year. This is a secondary provision that affects landlords, investors, and commercial property owners more than primary homestead owners, but it carries its own implications for the investment property market.
Who qualifies: The expanded exemption applies to Florida homestead properties — primary residences — in the traditional sense. Non-Florida residents who qualify for a homestead exemption will receive the existing exemption immediately, with the expanded exemption beginning with their fifth year of exemption.
The Savings — And the Research That Complicates Them
Here is where the analysis gets more nuanced than a simple “vote yes, save money” narrative.
When any ongoing cost associated with owning a home is reduced — property taxes, HOA fees, insurance — economic theory and empirical evidence both suggest that the reduction tends to get “capitalized” into the home’s price. Buyers are willing to pay more for a home with lower carrying costs, because the lower costs change the true total cost of ownership. Over time, the market adjusts.
This is not a theoretical curiosity. Research directly studying Florida’s property tax structure supports it.
A December 2025 analysis by Realtor.com — examining the full elimination of Florida property taxes as a scenario — found that Florida home values would increase by up to 9% and as much as $250 billion in aggregate if property taxes were eliminated entirely. The study, widely covered in Florida media, also noted that this dynamic makes the reform better for current homeowners (who capture both the tax savings and the value appreciation) and more challenging for first-time buyers (who face higher purchase prices without the corresponding tax savings history).
A 2024 National Tax Journal study reached a similar conclusion, noting that assessment limits — like Florida’s Save Our Homes cap — show “strong capitalization into home values.” In plain terms: when the tax burden on a property is reduced, that reduction tends to show up as higher prices in the transaction market.
Amendment 3 is not full elimination — it is an expansion of the homestead exemption. The capitalization effect would be proportional, not the full 9% scenario. But the dynamic is real and worth understanding, particularly for buyers who would be purchasing after the amendment takes effect and who would pay higher prices without necessarily capturing the same savings as the homeowners who owned before the change.
For the long-term homeowner — the retiree who has been in their home for two decades, the family who bought before Central Florida’s run-up — the calculus is different. They capture the tax savings, their home’s value may appreciate further from the capitalization effect, and their total financial position improves. This is exactly the population Amendment 3 is designed to help.
The Fiscal Reality: What Governments Lose
State economists have projected that Amendment 3 would reduce local government funding by approximately $5 billion in year one and approximately $12 billion by year five. That is not a number to wave away.
Local governments fund schools, fire and rescue services, road maintenance, parks, and the infrastructure that makes neighborhoods livable and desirable — and that, ultimately, supports the home values that homeowners are trying to protect. How municipalities and counties respond to a $5 billion annual reduction in year one is a legitimate question that voters deserve honest answers to, because the response — whether through service reductions, fee increases, or millage rate adjustments — will have real effects on the communities where Central Florida homeowners live.
Some local governments have already raised concerns. The tradeoffs are genuine. Amendment 3 is not a cost-free benefit. The question is whether the savings to individual homeowners — particularly long-term homestead owners on fixed incomes — justify the fiscal adjustment that local governments will need to make.
That is ultimately a values question as much as an economic one.
In my opinion, the outrageous spending and seemingly unlimited millage increases by municipalities have caused us to get to this point. If municipalities had controlled spending and decreased millage with the rapid increase of assessed values of properties, the government wouldn’t need to step in. Instead, they have to put a stop to the wild spending on unnecessary luxuries by municipalities to rein in the out-of-control spending. In one example in the City I live — Winter Park — the City decided to spend 7.4M on a golf course they didn’t need. The City already owned a golf course, and the second golf course was privately owned and handling the needs of the City. Instead of leaving it private, the City took out an $8M municipal bond to pay for the acquisition. Why did Winter Park need to take out more debt to buy a golf course we didn’t need?
Our local governments had a chance to do what was right and reduce millage to protect their citizens from losing their homes due to unaffordable taxes. They refused to do it and instead spent recklessly because it isn’t their money. If this were their private company or their personal assets, they wouldn’t make these reckless decisions, but since it’s not theirs, it’s a free-for-all.
The Equity Argument for Amendment 3
The case for Amendment 3 goes beyond annual savings calculations, and it deserves to be stated plainly.
Property taxes in Florida are assessed against the estimated market value of a property — a value that government assessors set based on market conditions, comparable sales, and formulas that have nothing to do with the homeowner’s income, the homeowner’s ability to pay, or the homeowner’s plans for the property. A homeowner who purchased in Maitland or Winter Park or Longwood twenty or thirty years ago, who built their budget around the carrying costs that existed when they bought, who paid off their mortgage and expected to live affordably in the home they own — that homeowner has watched their property tax bill grow in direct proportion to a market value they did not choose and cannot control.
Florida’s Save Our Homes cap already limits the annual increase in assessed value for homestead properties to 3% or the CPI, whichever is lower. But the gap between the capped assessed value and the actual market value creates a “recapture” risk at sale, and for homeowners who have been in their homes long enough, even the capped assessed value has climbed far above what made sense when they first bought.
A home purchased for $150,000 with a property tax bill of $1,500 per year that has climbed to an assessed value approaching $800,000 — with a tax bill heading toward $12,000 or $15,000 in municipalities with higher millage rates — is not a problem that the homeowner created. It is a structural feature of how property tax systems interact with appreciating markets. The long-term homeowner who has lived in their community, maintained their home, and paid off their mortgage should not face a forced decision between selling the home they planned to age in and absorbing a tax bill that their fixed income cannot support.
Amendment 3 does not solve that problem completely — a full exemption for homestead properties would be a more complete answer to that equity concern — but it is a meaningful step toward acknowledging that a government’s revenue from homeowners should not grow indefinitely as a function of arbitrary assessed values that the homeowner plays no role in setting.
What This Means for Central Florida Buyers, Sellers, and Homeowners
For long-term homestead owners: If Amendment 3 passes, your annual property tax bill drops — meaningfully, particularly if you are in a higher-millage municipality. Your home’s market value may also benefit from the capitalization effect that research suggests tends to follow tax reductions. The combination makes this amendment financially favorable for established homeowners, and particularly for retirees and fixed-income residents who have faced the most acute pressure from rising tax bills.
For sellers in 2027 and beyond: A higher effective exemption makes Central Florida homeownership more affordable on an ongoing basis — which supports buyer demand and, by extension, home values. Sellers listing after Amendment 3 takes effect may benefit from buyers who are calculating a lower ongoing cost of ownership into what they can afford.
For buyers: The research is clear that tax savings tend to be capitalized into prices over time, meaning buyers may pay more for homes in a post-amendment market. The degree to which this offsets the savings depends on how quickly and fully the market adjusts. Buyers who purchase soon after the amendment takes effect are better positioned to capture more of the savings before full capitalization occurs.
For investment property owners: The reduction in the non-homestead annual assessment cap from 10% to 5% limits how fast the assessed value — and therefore the tax bill — can climb on rental and investment properties. This benefits landlords and investors who have faced rapid assessment increases in Central Florida’s appreciating market.
Creegan Group’s Perspective
As real estate professionals who have worked in this market for over two decades — who have sat across from retirees wondering whether they can afford to stay in the neighborhood where they raised their families, and from buyers trying to understand the real ongoing cost of homeownership in Central Florida’s higher-millage communities — the equity case for Amendment 3 resonates with what we see in practice.
The property tax structure in Florida, for all of its established protections like Save Our Homes, has not kept pace with the speed at which market values have appreciated. A long-term homeowner in Maitland, Winter Park, or Longwood who bought their home at a fraction of its current value and who planned to live there for the rest of their life should not be forced to sell because the government’s assessment of their home’s market value has outpaced their income. That is the fundamental fairness question at the center of Amendment 3.
The research on capitalization is real and worth taking seriously — particularly for buyers who need to understand that the amendment is not purely a savings story. Markets adjust. Prices reflect carrying costs over time. A buyer who purchases after the exemption expands in a market that has already priced in the savings is in a different position than a current homeowner who has been paying taxes at the higher rate for years.
But for the Central Florida homeowners who are the primary beneficiaries of this amendment — long-term residents on fixed incomes, retirees, families who have been in their forever homes for decades — the case is strong. And the broader policy principle that a government’s revenue from a homeowner’s property should not scale infinitely alongside market values that the homeowner has no control over is one that any honest analysis of Florida’s property tax trajectory has to take seriously.
Amendment 3 is a meaningful step. It deserves a serious vote. We also need to get reasonable, business-minded people onto local city and county commission boards to control the reckless spending and seemingly never-ending millage increases. We need people who will rein in spending, treat their constituents’ money as their own, and put boundaries on spending and borrowing. It’s time to eliminate dirty lifetime politicians feeding their friends’ and families’ construction businesses with overexaggerated quotes and unnecessary projects. Why are we voting people into positions of power over our hard-earned money who have proven to spend unnecessarily?
Questions about how Amendment 3 could affect the value of your Central Florida home or your buying power in the current market? Creegan Group provides current-market analysis grounded in real transaction data — 439 closed Central Florida transactions through August 2026, $271 million in volume. We are happy to have that conversation.
📞 407.622.1111 | 🌐 CreeganGroup.com | 📍 439 Lake Howell Road, Maitland, FL 32751
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Florida Amendment 3 on the November 2026 ballot? Florida Amendment 3 is a proposed constitutional amendment appearing on the November 3, 2026 General Election ballot, requiring 60% voter approval to pass. It would expand the homestead exemption for qualifying primary residence property from $50,000 to $150,000 in 2027 and $250,000 in 2028 (for non-school millages), with annual CPI adjustments beginning in 2029. It would also reduce the annual assessed value increase cap for non-homestead properties from 10% to 5%. If passed, changes take effect January 1, 2027.
How much would Amendment 3 save me on my Florida property taxes? The annual savings from Amendment 3 depend on your home’s assessed value and your local millage rate. Moving the non-school millage exemption from $50,000 to $250,000 means an additional $200,000 of assessed value would be exempt from non-school property taxes. At a combined non-school millage rate of 15 mills, for example, that would represent $3,000 in annual savings. Homeowners in higher-millage municipalities could see larger savings. The school millage exemption remains at $25,000.
Would Florida Amendment 3 raise home values? Research suggests it could. A Realtor.com analysis published in December 2025 found that full elimination of Florida property taxes could increase home values by up to 9% and add as much as $250 billion to the state’s aggregate residential value. Amendment 3 is not full elimination, so the effect would be proportionally smaller — but the underlying dynamic, called tax capitalization, is well-established: lower ongoing ownership costs tend to be reflected in higher purchase prices over time, as buyers are willing to pay more for lower-carrying-cost properties. Current homeowners may benefit from both the tax savings and appreciation. Buyers who purchase after the market adjusts may pay more while capturing less of the savings.
Would the home value increase cancel out the property tax savings from Amendment 3? The economic theory of capitalization suggests that over time, a portion of any ongoing cost reduction tends to be reflected in a higher price for the asset. In practice, for long-term homeowners who have been paying taxes at the higher rate for years, the amendment delivers clear financial benefit — reduced annual tax bill plus potential appreciation. For first-time buyers purchasing after the market has adjusted, the calculus is more complex. A 2024 National Tax Journal study noted that assessment limit policies show “strong capitalization” into home values, which can make affordability worse for first-time buyers even as it benefits current owners.
How does Florida Amendment 3 affect investment and rental property owners? Amendment 3 includes a provision that would reduce the annual cap on assessed value increases for non-homestead properties — investment properties, commercial real estate, and rentals — from 10% per year to 5% per year. This limits how fast the taxable value, and therefore the tax bill, can grow on investment and rental properties in an appreciating market. Investment property owners in Central Florida who have seen assessed values and tax bills climb rapidly in recent years would benefit from the lower cap.
What is the fiscal impact of Florida Amendment 3 on local governments? State economists have projected that Amendment 3 would reduce local government funding by approximately $5 billion in its first year of implementation and approximately $12 billion by year five. How local governments — counties, cities, school districts — respond to this reduction in revenue, through service adjustments, fee changes, or millage rate modifications, is one of the legitimate concerns about the amendment that voters should weigh alongside the direct homeowner savings.
Is Florida Amendment 3 good for Central Florida homeowners? Yes. For long-term homestead owners — particularly retirees and fixed-income residents who have watched their property tax bills climb as market values appreciated — Amendment 3 offers meaningful annual savings and aligns with a fundamental fairness principle: that a government’s revenue from a homeowner’s property should not grow indefinitely in proportion to market-based assessed values the homeowner plays no role in setting. For buyers entering the market after the amendment takes effect, the picture is more nuanced, as research suggests some portion of the tax savings may be captured in higher purchase prices over time. Creegan Group is happy to discuss how Amendment 3 affects the specific economics of your Central Florida homeownership situation. Call 407.622.1111.
Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, or tax advice. Homeowners and buyers should consult their own tax advisor or attorney for guidance specific to their situation. Creegan Group’s commentary represents the professional perspective of a Central Florida real estate brokerage and is not intended to serve as a voter recommendation.