By the Mountain Cove Homes team · Miami, Florida
Save Our Homes portability is not a discount you apply for at closing, it is an accumulated benefit you already own and can lose by missing a date. Every year your Florida homestead is capped, the gap between what the house is worth and what it is taxed on widens. That gap is money, and Florida lets you take up to $500,000 of it with you.
It is also easy to leave unclaimed, because it is not part of a closing. The transfer is filed with a county property appraiser on the appraiser’s calendar, not the escrow calendar, and nothing in the transaction itself triggers it.
The basics — up to $500,000, claimed on the homestead application — are covered in the full cost of owning a home in Miami-Dade. This is about the parts that decide how much you actually keep: that you may not need to sell, that two people do not add their benefits together, how the arithmetic changes when you buy down, and one rule that changes in 2027.
What Actually Transfers
Not your tax bill, and not your exemption. What moves is the assessment difference.
Once a Florida homestead has the exemption, its assessed value is reassessed annually and the increase cannot exceed the lower of three percent or the change in the Consumer Price Index. Market value is not capped. Over ten or fifteen years those two numbers separate, sometimes dramatically.
That separation is the Save Our Homes benefit. Portability is the mechanism that lets you carry it to the next homestead instead of starting over at full market value.
The Miami-Dade Property Appraiser describes it as transferring the difference between the assessed and market values from a previous homestead property to another, up to $500,000.
Find your own number before anyone quotes you one
You do not have to estimate this. Miami-Dade property records are public, and the Property Appraiser’s Property Search returns assessment, exemption and taxable value information for any parcel by address or folio.
Pull your current home. Read the market value and the assessed value on the same screen. Subtract one from the other.
That figure, capped at $500,000, is what is portable. It is the single most useful number to have in hand before you walk into a sales office, because it changes what a given house actually costs you rather than what it costs in the abstract.
Do it before you shop, not after you have chosen. A benefit you discover at the end of a purchase is a benefit you may have already priced yourself out of using well.
The Arithmetic, Both Directions
Florida runs two different formulas depending on whether the new house is worth more or less than the old one, and the difference is significant enough to affect which house you buy.
Buying up
If the just value of the new homestead is equal to or greater than the just value of the prior one, the assessed value of the new home is its just value minus the lesser of $500,000 or the difference between the just value and assessed value of the prior homestead.
In plain terms, the benefit transfers in full, capped at $500,000. A buyer with $180,000 of accumulated protection who moves to a more expensive house keeps all $180,000 of it.
Buying down
If the new home is worth less, the statute prorates. The assessed value becomes the new home’s just value divided by the prior home’s just value, multiplied by the prior home’s assessed value.
The benefit shrinks in proportion to the drop in value. That is not a penalty, but it does mean the decision to downsize carries a tax consequence that is worth modeling before, rather than after.
Either direction, the $500,000 ceiling applies.
The Three-Year Window, and How to Count It
The statute conditions the benefit on having received a homestead exemption as of January 1 of any of the three immediately preceding years. The Department of Revenue states the same rule from the buyer’s side: you must establish the exemption on the new home within three years of January 1 of the year you abandoned the old one.
Two things follow, and both are counted in January 1s rather than in months.
First, the window is generous. Selling in one year and buying two years later does not necessarily forfeit the benefit.
Second, anything you read that says two years is out of date. The current text of section 193.155 says three, and the 2020 edition of the same section still said two — the change took effect with the 2021 tax roll. Older articles repeat the old rule.
One change already on the books
The Department of Revenue issued a bulletin in July 2026 on chapter 2026-239, Laws of Florida, which amends the portability provisions to remove the requirement that the qualifying prior homestead be the immediate prior homestead — and which first applies to the 2027 tax roll.
The three-year window is unchanged. What changes, from the 2027 roll forward, is that the prior homestead within that window no longer has to be the last one. If your move straddles that boundary, confirm the treatment with the Property Appraiser rather than assuming.
You May Not Have to Sell the Old House
This is the provision that surprises people, and it is in the statute in plain language.
A person entitled to assessment under the section may abandon his or her homestead even though it remains his or her primary residence, by notifying the property appraiser of the county where that homestead is located. The notification must be in writing and delivered at the same time as, or before, the new homestead exemption application.
Read that again. Abandoning the homestead for portability purposes is a filing, not a sale.
That matters for anyone keeping the old house as a rental, transferring it within a family, or moving before a sale closes. It does not make the old house tax-free — abandoning the homestead means it loses the exemption and the cap that came with it. But it decouples the tax benefit from the closing calendar, which is a genuinely useful thing to know before you structure a move.
Two People, One New House
Here is the misconception that costs the most money, and it runs in the optimistic direction.
If two people who each held a qualifying homestead buy a single new home together, the reduction is limited to the higher of the two prior assessment differences, and may not exceed $500,000.
The higher of the two. Not the sum. Two people with $200,000 each do not arrive with $400,000; they arrive with $200,000.
Splitting a jointly held homestead
Spouses or former spouses abandoning jointly titled property may designate the ownership share attributed to each, using Form DR-501TS, Designation of Ownership Shares of Abandoned Homestead.
Two details on that form decide whether it works. It must be filed with the property appraiser in the county where the abandoned homestead is located — the old county, not the new one. And it must be filed before either person submits their DR-501T.
The form states plainly that once filed, the designation is irrevocable. Sequence it wrong and there is no fixing it afterward.
The Forms and the Deadline
Portability is claimed on Form DR-501T, Transfer of Homestead Assessment Difference, which the Department of Revenue identifies as an attachment to the original homestead application. It is filed with the property appraiser by March 1, the same deadline as the homestead exemption itself.
You do not file the whole chain yourself. When the prior homestead was in a different county, the statute directs the property appraiser in the new county to transmit the completed form and homestead application to the property appraiser in the old county. That office then issues Form DR-501RVSH, the certificate of transfer, by April 1 or within two weeks of receiving the DR-501T, whichever is later.
So a move from Broward or Palm Beach into Miami-Dade works, and the counties handle the exchange between them. If applicants are transferring from more than one county, each files a separate form.
Missing March 1 is not automatically fatal. The statute allows a late applicant to file and, under section 194.011(3), petition the Value Adjustment Board. That is a recovery route, not a plan.
There is no limit on how many times you can use it
Nothing in the section caps the number of transfers over a lifetime. The constraint is the window, not a counter: each move has to land within three years of a January 1 on which you held the exemption.
That matters for anyone who moves more than once in a decade, which in South Florida is not unusual. A household that moves, transfers the benefit, and moves again inside the window carries the accumulated difference forward each time, subject to the same $500,000 ceiling and the same March 1 filing.
What breaks the chain is time, not repetition. Let more than three January 1s pass without a Florida homestead and the accumulated benefit is gone, and no amount of paperwork afterward brings it back.
Save Our Homes Portability and the Closing Calendar
Portability travels on the same two dates as the exemption it attaches to — January 1 for eligibility, March 1 for filing — and those dates are covered in full here. What matters for the transfer is the consequence.
A purchase occupied before January 1 can carry the exemption and the transferred benefit into the very next tax year. The same purchase closing in February usually cannot, and the benefit sits idle for a full cycle while the new house is assessed at market value with no cap and no transfer.
On a new build that timing is rarely the buyer’s to choose. The certificate of occupancy decides it, which is a good reason to ask where a construction schedule expects to land relative to January 1 before the contract is signed rather than after.
What Portability Does Not Do
Four corrections, because the benefit gets oversold as often as it gets ignored.
It does not lower your millage or your insurance. It reduces the assessed value the millage is applied to, and nothing else on the tax bill changes because of it.
It does not exempt a newly built house from being assessed at full value first. Portability reduces the figure the millage is applied to; it does not keep the improvement off the roll.
It does not transfer to a buyer. When you sell, your accumulated benefit leaves with you. The assessed value on a comparable home’s public record belongs to that owner, which is why an estimate built from it will understate what you would pay.
And it does not apply outside Florida. The prior homestead must have been a Florida homestead with the exemption in place.
Four Warning Signs
An estimate built on the current owner’s taxes. Their cap is theirs. Ask what number the estimate was built from.
A closing agent who says the portability form is handled. It is filed with the property appraiser on a county deadline, and it is not part of the closing package.
Advice that you must sell first. The statute allows abandonment by written notice while the house remains your primary residence.
Two prior homesteads described as additive. The statute takes the higher of the two, and the difference between believing otherwise and reading the section is often six figures of assessed value.
Questions to Ask the Property Appraiser Before You Sign
What is the current assessment difference on your existing homestead, in dollars, as of the most recent roll.
What the assessed value on the new home is projected to be after the transfer, at the price you are considering.
Whether the written abandonment notice needs to be filed before or with the new application, and to which office.
Whether your move crosses the 2027 tax roll boundary in a way that engages the change to the prior-homestead requirement.
Bring the folio numbers of both properties. Every one of those questions is answered faster with a parcel identifier than with an address, and an estimate printed at a sales desk is not a substitute for an answer from the office that will actually set the value. The same discipline applies to the recurring charges a community structure creates and to what those charges cost over their full term.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much of the Save Our Homes benefit can you transfer?
Up to $500,000 of the difference between the prior homestead’s just value and its assessed value. If the new home is worth as much or more, the benefit transfers in full up to that cap; if it is worth less, the benefit transfers proportionally.
How long do you have to use portability?
You must have held a homestead exemption as of January 1 of one of the three immediately preceding years. Counting is in January 1s, not months, and the window was extended from two years to three effective with the 2021 tax roll.
Do you have to sell your old house to claim portability?
No. Florida allows you to abandon the prior homestead by written notice to the property appraiser in that county even while it remains your primary residence, delivered at the same time as or before the new homestead application.
Can two people combine their portability benefits?
No. When two people who each held a qualifying homestead establish a single new one, the reduction is limited to the higher of the two prior assessment differences, capped at $500,000. They are not added together.
Does portability work between Florida counties?
Yes. The property appraiser in the new county sends the application to the county of the prior homestead, which returns a certificate of transfer by April 1 or within two weeks of receiving the form, whichever is later.
What form do you file for portability?
Form DR-501T, filed as an attachment to the homestead exemption application, with the property appraiser by March 1. Spouses splitting a jointly held prior homestead file Form DR-501TS first, in the old county, and that designation is irrevocable.
Portability is the rare tax provision that rewards paperwork rather than income, and for a long-time Florida owner it can outweigh a good deal of what gets negotiated over price. It is also the one line item that lives entirely outside the transaction.
About Mountain Cove Homes. Mountain Cove Homes is a boutique home builder based in Miami, Florida, building single-family homes and townhomes in small communities across Miami-Dade County — including Golden Park and other communities currently selling. Its personnel have been constructing homes in South Florida since the early 1980s. More about how the company works and where it builds.
This article is general information about Florida property tax assessment limitations. It is not tax or legal advice. Statutes, forms and deadlines change, and the amounts that apply to a specific property depend on that property. Verify your own numbers with the Miami-Dade Property Appraiser before making a purchase decision.
For additional legal disclaimers please see the legal information document.
Talk to Mountain Cove Homes
Mountain Cove Homes is a boutique home builder in Miami, Florida, building single-family homes and townhomes in small communities across Miami-Dade County — most of them with no HOA and no CDD tax. If you want to walk through lot availability, pricing, and what is included at this stage of construction, we will give you the numbers directly.
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