What Amendment 3 Actually Means for Your Orlando Vacation Home

Half a dozen owners have forwarded me the same article this month, usually with some version of the same question attached: is my tax bill about to be cut in half?

The short answer is no. The longer answer is more interesting, and there is one part of it that genuinely matters if you are buying or selling in the resort communities this year — though it isn’t the part being written about.

What is on the ballot

In a special session at the start of June, the Florida Legislature put a property tax amendment in front of voters for 3 November. It needs sixty per cent to pass. The headline provision raises the homestead exemption on non-school taxes to $150,000 in 2027 and $250,000 in 2028, which is a substantial change for Florida residents living in their own homes.

You cannot claim homestead on a vacation home. So that provision, the one generating all the coverage, does not apply to a single property we sell.

What does apply is a much narrower clause. Non-homestead property — rentals, second homes, commercial buildings — would see the annual cap on assessment increases drop from ten per cent to five, starting 1 January 2027. That is the whole of it. No new exemption, no reduction, just a slower ceiling on how quickly the assessed value can climb.

I have seen this written up as a fifty per cent tax break. It isn’t. A cap on assessment growth is not a cut, it is insurance against fast appreciation, and in a year where values move sideways it does nothing whatsoever. It also excludes school taxes entirely, and in Osceola, Polk, Lake and Orange the school portion is a meaningful slice of what you pay. Useful, then, but a long way from the headline.

The part that actually catches people out

Here is the thing almost nobody writing about this has mentioned, and it is the reason my phone rings every November.

Which means the five per cent cap, if it passes, does nothing for you in year one. It only starts working in year two and compounds slowly from there. It rewards owners who hold for a decade. It does nothing at all for the buyer signing this autumn.

This trips up overseas buyers constantly. Someone in Surrey or Sligo reads a listing sheet, sees the current owner’s annual taxes, builds their yield model on that number, and then gets a genuine shock the following November when the bill arrives forty per cent higher. It is entirely avoidable. Build your first-year carrying costs from your purchase price and you will not be surprised.

Sellers, the same point runs in reverse. A well-advised buyer will underwrite on the post-sale assessment rather than yours. Being able to hand them that figure yourself, accurately, kills the objection before it is raised.

Insurance, briefly

There is real relief here, though not the version doing the rounds. Citizens, the state-backed insurer of last resort, had personal lines reductions approved averaging around nine per cent statewide, applying at renewal from the spring. Its separate commercial lines changes took effect on 1 July.

The caveat matters more than the numbers. Plenty of short-term rental homes in the resort communities are not on Citizens at all, and Citizens has shed the great majority of its policies as private carriers have come back into Florida. Treat the reduction as a signal about the direction of the wider market rather than a forecast of your own renewal, and ring your carrier.

Nothing is settled yet

Worth saying clearly: this amendment may not pass, and it may not appear on the ballot in its current wording. Three lawsuits have been filed in Leon County arguing the ballot title and summary are written to persuade rather than to inform, with a hearing this week. The Governor, who called the special session in the first place, has said he will vote for the measure but will not campaign for it, because what the Legislature passed was not what he asked for.

There is also organised opposition making the argument that removing a large chunk of the homesteaded tax base has to be paid for by somebody, and that non-homestead owners are the obvious somebody. That case has not been tested, and neither has the counter-argument that the amendment’s spending restrictions will hold local budgets down. I am not going to tell you how to vote on it. I will tell you that betting your 2027 numbers on it passing would be premature.

What to do between now and January

Your TRIM notice arrives in August. That assessed value is the number any future cap would apply to, and August is the window in which you can question it — not November when the bill lands. Read it properly.

Beyond that, nothing about your 2026 bill changes either way. Any of this would first show up on the 2027 roll, and only if it clears sixty per cent. Plan on the market you have, not the one on the ballot.

General information about proposed Florida legislation, not tax or legal advice. Amendment 3 has not been approved and its ballot language is subject to pending litigation. Speak to your accountant or attorney about your own position.