Tampa metro · Hillsborough, Pinellas and Pasco · 63 tax districts

What happens to property taxes when you buy in Tampa metro

In Florida a homestead assessment is capped at the lesser of 3% or CPI while one owner holds the home, so a long-held house can sit far below what it is worth. A sale ends the cap: the assessment resets to just value as of January 1 of the following year, and the bill is rebuilt from that figure. Every page below carries that place's own certified millage, split school and non-school, with the arithmetic worked out.

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Before anything else

March 1, 2027 is the date that costs money.

An exemption application must be filed with the county property appraiser on or before March 1. Failure to apply by March 1 constitutes a waiver of the exemption privilege for that year. (s. 196.011(1)(a), Fla. Stat.) It is not a late fee and there is no grace period: the exemption is gone for the year. An application filed without a required social security number is incomplete, and the cure deadline is April 1, 2027 (s. 196.011(1)(b), Fla. Stat.).

The exemption is $25,000 against every levy plus up to $26,411 against the non-school levies only, on assessed value above $50,000 (s. 196.031(1)(a)-(b), Fla. Stat.). In the City of Tampa, on a home resetting to $450,000 of just value, the difference between filing on time and missing the date is $853 for the year — $8,077 against $8,929, at 19.8428 mills. The figure for every other place is on its own page.

The trap worth knowing now: if you look up the parcel after closing and see a homestead exemption listed, that is the seller's exemption for the current tax year. You inherit it for that year and it does not carry forward. You still have to file your own.

If you do miss it, the door is narrow but it is not sealed. Two routes, both in s. 196.011(8)-(9), Fla. Stat.. If the failure to file by March 1 was the result of postal error and you can clearly document it, the value adjustment board shall grant the exemption. Otherwise you must file with the property appraiser on or before the 25th day after the appraiser mails the TRIM notices, which happens in August — and on sufficient evidence that you were unable to apply in time, or of extenuating circumstances, the appraiser may grant it. If the appraiser does not, you may petition the value adjustment board inside that same window on payment of a nonrefundable $15 fee, and the board may grant it for the current year.
Read the verbs. Outside postal error this is discretionary and the window is about three weeks in late summer, not a second deadline. File by March 1.

Dated as of 2026-10-12

What the November 3, 2026 ballot measure would and would not change.

Every exemption figure on this site is current law. Amendment 3 would change some of those figures effective January 1, 2027 if approved by 60% of voters, so a page that projects next year's bill has to say which law it used. It would not change the reset itself. We take no position on the measure.

What it would change. Art. VII ss. 4, 6 and 9; Art. XII, Fla. Const.. Verified 2026-10-12 against the amendment's own constitutional text.
Provision	Would become	Clause
Homestead exemption, all levies other than school district levies	Up to $150,000 beginning January 1, 2027 and up to $250,000 beginning January 1, 2028, inflation-indexed from January 1, 2029. Replaces the present two-tier exemption.	Art. VII s. 6(a)(1)a.2
New Florida residents	A person who was not a permanent Florida resident as of December 31, 2026 and establishes homestead on or after January 1, 2027 receives $25,000 for school levies and $50,000 for non-school levies, rising to the full amount beginning with the fifth year of exemption.	Art. VII s. 6(a)(1)b
Non-homestead annual assessment cap, non-school levies	Ten percent before January 1, 2027; five percent beginning January 1, 2027.	Art. VII ss. 4(g)(1), 4(h)(1)
Local use of property tax revenue	Restricts county and municipal property tax revenue to specified purposes.	Art. VII s. 9

What it would NOT change. Each clause below is unstruck in the amendment text, which is published with strikethroughs showing the struck and inserted words — which is what makes this a checkable statement rather than an opinion.
Provision	Stays as it is	Clause
The Save Our Homes cap itself	Still the lower of 3% or the change in CPI.	Art. VII s. 4(d)(1)
The homestead change-of-ownership reset	Homestead property is still assessed at just value as of January 1 of the year following a change of ownership.	Art. VII s. 4(d)(3)
The non-homestead change-of-ownership reset	Still triggered by a change of ownership or control, including a change of ownership of the legal entity that owns the property.	Art. VII s. 4(g)(3)
Portability	Still capped at $500,000.	Art. VII s. 4(d)(8)
The school district exemption	Still $25,000, and the school levy is still uncapped on a rental.	Art. VII s. 6(a)(1)a.1

Why this does not make the arithmetic on this site obsolete. The reset is the mechanism, and the reset is untouched. A sale still ends the seller's accumulated cap, and the assessment is still set to just value as of January 1 of the following year. What a yes vote would change is how much of that reset value is exempt from the non-school levies — and it would change nothing at all about the school levy, which stays at a $25,000 exemption and stays uncapped on a rental. On a Tampa home the school levy is 6.3400 of 19.8428 mills, so roughly a third of the shock would be unaffected either way. If the measure passes, the exemption figures here are refreshed for the 2027 roll the same way the millage is refreshed every autumn.

Sources: Florida Department of State, Constitutional Initiatives — Increased Homestead Exemption; Lower Cap on Increases in Non-Homestead Property Assessments (https://constitutionalinitiatives.dos.fl.gov/) · Ballotpedia, Florida Amendment 3 (2026) — full constitutional text with strikethroughs. Verified 2026-10-12 against the constitutional text rather than against a summary of it, because the “would not change” claims above are only checkable in the text. Nothing on this page is legal, tax, or voting advice, and nothing on it is a recommendation about the measure.

How to use this

Three steps to the number you actually pay.

Find the place
Open the page for the city or town the house sits in. If it is outside any city, open the county's unincorporated page — communities like Brandon, Wesley Chapel and Palm Harbor do not levy their own millage and are taxed at the county rate.
Find the tax district
Florida sets rates per taxing authority, not per city, so a few places carry more than one. Where that is true the page shows every rate and names each district; the property appraiser's record for the address says which one applies.
Run your own numbers
Each page works the reset at $300,000, $450,000 and $600,000. The free property tax check runs it on the seller's actual assessment and the just value your home resets to.

If you have read our Michigan pages

Florida resets differently, and reaches further.

	Michigan	Florida
The cap	Proposal A caps taxable value growth at the inflation rate multiplier. MCL 211.27a	Save Our Homes caps a homestead assessment at the lesser of 3% or CPI — 2.9% applied for 2025, 2.7% for 2026. s. 193.155(1), Fla. Stat.
What the reset sets	Taxable value becomes the assessed value, about half of market value	The assessment becomes just value, as of January 1 of the year following the sale. s. 193.155(3)(a), Fla. Stat.
What living in the home changes	The rate. The Principal Residence Exemption removes up to 18 mills of local school operating tax	Not the rate — everyone in a district pays the same one. It changes the exemption and the cap
The deadline	Form 2368, June 1 for the summer levy and November 1 for the winter levy	March 1, once. Missing it waives the exemption for the whole year. s. 196.011(1)(a), Fla. Stat.
Investor buyers	Computed at the non-homestead rate; the reset is the same reset	Also reset. Non-homestead residential has its own 10% cap for 2026, non-school only, and it ends on a sale — or on the transfer of more than half the entity that owned the property. s. 193.1554(5), Fla. Stat.

The Michigan pages, 165 metro Detroit communities · The Michigan property tax check

The index

Every place, by county.

Ranges below are the lowest and highest certified total rates published anywhere in that county. Both ends are real figures from the county's own table, never averages.

Hillsborough County 4 districts

18.2515 to 19.8428 mills · 2025 certified

Pasco County 8 districts

14.4292 to 22.5289 mills · 2026 certified

Beyond the tax line

The tax reset is one number. A house has about forty.

A financial inspection puts every one of them on the same page for the exact address you are considering: the published value estimates, true monthly cost, ten years of equity math, the big-ticket replacements coming, the city's records on the house, and a verdict of Proceed, Conditional, or Walk Away.

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Rates are the certified totals published by the Hillsborough, Pinellas and Pasco county property appraisers and the Florida Department of Revenue, including the separate school and non-school split for every tax district. Each county's roll year is stated on its own page and they are not all the same. These pages are arithmetic on those published rates, for screening. They exclude non-ad-valorem assessments — CDD debt and operations, MSBUs, solid waste and fire fees — which arrive on the same bill but are not millage. Your actual bill depends on the just value the property appraiser determines and on the exemptions you qualify for and file. Florida coverage is Tampa metro only: Hillsborough, Pinellas and Pasco. Nothing here is legal, tax, or lending advice, and nothing here is an opinion of value.

What happens to property taxes when you buy in Tampa metro

March 1, 2027 is the date that costs money.

What the November 3, 2026 ballot measure would and would not change.

Three steps to the number you actually pay.

Find the place

Find the tax district

Run your own numbers

Florida resets differently, and reaches further.

Every place, by county.

Hillsborough County 4 districts

Pinellas County 51 districts

Pasco County 8 districts

The tax reset is one number. A house has about forty.