Property Taxes & the Florida Homestead Exemption in Brevard County

Your annual tax bill is your home's taxable assessed value multiplied by the local millage rate — a rate expressed as dollars per $1,000 of value, set separately by the county, your school district, your city, and any special districts, then combined. On top of that ad valorem (value-based) tax, your bill also includes flat non-ad valorem fees for things like solid waste or stormwater service.

As a rough, county-wide reference point: recent Census data puts Brevard County's effective property tax rate at around 0.7% of home value, with a county-wide median annual bill in the low-to-mid $2,000s — your actual bill depends heavily on your specific city, district, and whether the home is homesteaded. BCPAO's tax roll tool can show the exact millage for any address.

If you own a home in Florida and it's your permanent residence as of January 1 of the tax year, you can apply for the homestead exemption. It removes up to $50,000 from your taxable value in two parts:

• The first $25,000 applies to every taxing authority, including school district taxes.
• An additional exemption up to $25,000 applies only to the portion of your assessed value between $50,000 and $75,000, and excludes school taxes.

You must file with BCPAO by March 1 of the year you want the exemption applied — buy in 2026, and you'd file by March 1, 2027 for that tax year (the year you close, you're taxed as the prior owner's assessment carries over). Once approved, it renews automatically each year as long as the home stays your permanent residence — no annual refiling required.

Once you have homestead status, Florida's “Save Our Homes” rule caps how much your assessed value can rise each year: the lower of 3%, or the change in the Consumer Price Index. For 2026, that cap works out to 2.7%. Non-homesteaded property (second homes, rentals, land) has a separate, higher cap of 10% per year.

This is powerful the longer you own: even if your home's market value jumps well above 3% in a hot year, your taxable assessed value can't follow it up nearly as fast — which is also exactly why a gap can open up between what your home is worth and what it's taxed on the longer you stay.

If you already have a homesteaded property in Florida and you're buying another one here, you don't have to start your Save Our Homes benefit over from zero. Portability lets you transfer up to $500,000 of your accumulated savings to your new home, as long as you establish the new homestead by January 1 of the third year after leaving the old one — in practice, roughly a two-year window.

You'd file a Portability Application (Form DR-501T) alongside your new homestead exemption application, by the same March 1 deadline. If your new home is worth more than your old one, the ported amount reduces your new assessed value; if it's worth less, you can port a proportional share of the difference.

Beyond the standard homestead exemption, Brevard County offers several others worth checking:

• Limited-income seniors (65+): an additional exemption, income-verified annually, filed between January 1 and April 30 — a different window than the March 1 deadline above.
• Widow/widower, blind, or non-total disability: $5,000 off taxable value for each, documentation required.
• Veterans & first responders with a total, permanent, service-connected disability: a full (100%) exemption from ad valorem property taxes, extending to surviving non-remarried spouses.
• Veterans with a 10–100% service-connected disability: a $5,000 exemption, no homestead required.

If you're a veteran, it's also worth reading our VA home loans guide — it covers these exemptions alongside VA financing itself.

Property Taxes & Homestead Exemption FAQ