Florida's Save Our Homes cap protects homestead properties — but it does NOT stop you from appealing. Learn exactly when a VAB petition still makes sense, and when it saves you nothing.
Florida's Save Our Homes amendment (Article VII, Section 4 of the Florida Constitution) caps how fast the assessed value of a homestead property can increase year over year. The cap is the lesser of 3% or the Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation rate. This means if your home's just (market) value increases 15% in a year, your assessed value for tax purposes can only increase by 3% at most. Over time, this creates a gap called the SOH benefit: the difference between your just value and your assessed value. For long-term homeowners in appreciating markets, this gap can be enormous.
If your just value is $600,000 but your assessed value is capped at $320,000 due to years of SOH accumulation, reducing the just value to $560,000 does nothing to your tax bill. Your assessed value is still only $320,000, which is already far below the new just value. In this scenario, a VAB petition wins the argument and still saves you zero dollars because the SOH cap was doing all the work. This is the situation where an appeal is genuinely not worth filing. Before you appeal, run this check: if your assessed value is already meaningfully below your just value due to SOH, a reduction in just value will not affect what you pay.
Several situations make a VAB petition valuable even with Save Our Homes protection. First, if your assessed value is close to your just value (small SOH gap), any reduction in just value passes through directly to your tax bill. Second, if you recently bought the property, your assessed value reset to your purchase price and you have no SOH accumulation yet — full market value is being taxed. Third, even with a large SOH gap, if your just value drops below your current assessed value, your assessed value must follow it down.
Before spending $89 on a VAB petition, run this simple check using your TRIM notice. Subtract your assessed value from your just value. If the difference is large (say, $75,000 or more), estimate what reduction you could realistically achieve — typically 5-15% of just value based on comparable sales. If that reduction amount is less than the existing SOH gap, the appeal saves you nothing and you should skip it. If the reduction would bring just value close to or below assessed value, the appeal has real financial impact.
TaxAppeal USA's appeal flow shows you your just value and assessed value before you reach the payment step. If your SOH gap is large enough that a realistic appeal would save you nothing, you will see that information and can make an informed decision. We do not want you to pay $89 for an appeal that cannot help you. For homeowners where the math works — small SOH gap, recent purchase, or no homestead — we generate a professional DR-486 VAB petition with comparable sales evidence and file via tracked USPS First Class mail before your 25-day deadline.
$89 flat fee. You sign it, we file it. You keep 100% of your savings.
TaxAppeal USA is a self-service document-preparation and mail filing service. In every state we serve, including Florida, we are not property tax consultants, agents, or representatives, we do not provide tax or legal advice, and we do not represent customers before any appraisal district, board of equalization, value adjustment board, or review board. Every protest and petition is prepared for the property owner, signed by the owner, and filed in the owner’s name. In Florida we also pay your county’s Value Adjustment Board filing fee on your behalf and mail your petition to the Clerk of the Value Adjustment Board. Your petition is signed by you as the property owner under section 194.011(3), Florida Statutes. TaxAppeal USA does not sign as your representative, does not appear before the Board, and does not present evidence or argument at a hearing.