For owners thinking of renting
Renting out your house without losing the homestead exemption
This is the single most expensive thing people get wrong before renting out a Florida home, and it is rarely the rent that bites — it is the assessment. Lose the homestead exemption and you lose the Save Our Homes cap with it, which on a house held for years can be worth far more than the exemption itself. The law is specific, and there is more room in it than most owners think.
Updated 2026-10-04
First, the thing that confuses everybody
"Homestead" in Florida means two unrelated things, and searching for one returns the other. There is Homestead the city, in south Miami-Dade, where I work. And there is the homestead exemption, a statewide property tax benefit that has nothing to do with the city at all.
You can own a homesteaded house in Jacksonville and you can own a non-homesteaded investment condo in the city of Homestead. This guide is about the exemption. If you were looking for the city, the Homestead page is the one you want.
What you actually stand to lose
The exemption itself is the smaller half. It takes $25,000 off your assessed value for all taxes, and a further $25,000 off the portion between $50,000 and $75,000 for everything except school taxes. Useful, but not life-changing.
The Save Our Homes cap is the valuable half. While a property is homesteaded, its assessed value cannot rise more than 3% a year or the change in CPI, whichever is lower — regardless of what the market does. On a house bought years ago in a market that has moved the way south Miami-Dade has, the gap between the capped assessed value and the actual market value can be enormous, and that gap is the real benefit.
Lose homestead status and the assessment resets to market value. The property then falls under the 10% non-homestead cap instead, which does not apply to school taxes at all. Owners who have held a house for a decade are sometimes looking at a tax bill that doubles. That is the number to work out before you decide, not after.
The rule, as written
Section 196.061, Florida Statutes, is short and it is the whole game. Renting all or substantially all of a dwelling previously claimed as a homestead constitutes abandonment of the exemption, until the owner physically moves back in.
Then comes the part that saves people: abandonment after 1 January of any year does not affect that year's exemption unless the property is rented for more than 30 days per calendar year for two consecutive years.
Read that carefully, because two separate conditions both have to be met. More than 30 days in a calendar year, and that happening in two years running. Rent the place for four months this year and nothing next year, and the exemption survives. Rent it for three weeks a year indefinitely, and the exemption survives. Rent it from March through December two years running, and it is gone.
There are narrow exceptions for members of the Armed Forces on mandatory service obligations and for certain U.S. Government officers stationed outside Florida. If that is you, the statute protects you and you should say so to the property appraiser rather than assume.
What it costs to get this wrong
Quietly renting the house out and leaving the exemption in place is not a grey area, and the penalty is not a slap. Under section 196.161 the property appraiser records a tax lien against the property and can recover back taxes for any year within the prior ten years, plus a 50% penalty on the unpaid tax for each year, plus 15% interest a year.
There is relief where the exemption was granted because of a clerical error by the appraiser's office rather than anything you did, and the back taxes are limited to five years with no penalty in that case. Volunteering the mistake before you are caught also helps considerably. Waiting to be caught does not.
Miami-Dade's property appraiser runs an active exemption-fraud investigation unit, and rental listings are not a secret. A property advertised on a listing portal with photographs of the inside is about as public as a document gets.
The decision, in practice
There are three honest options and the right one depends entirely on the gap between your capped assessment and market value.
Keep it short. Stay under 30 days of rental in the calendar year, or make sure you never do two such years back to back. This works for a seasonal let and for people who travel, and it keeps the cap intact.
Give up the exemption deliberately. If you are moving out properly and the house is becoming a rental, work out the new tax bill, put it in the numbers, and price the rent accordingly. For many owners the rent comfortably covers the increase. For an owner who has held since before the last run-up, sometimes it does not, and that changes the whole decision.
Sell instead and take the cap with you. Portability lets you move up to $500,000 of accumulated Save Our Homes benefit to your next Florida homestead. If you are leaving the area anyway, carrying the benefit forward is often worth more than the rent — and the tax reset on the next house is exactly where it lands.
What I would want to know first
Before any of this is worth discussing, two numbers settle it. Your current assessed value against the market value of the house — the Miami-Dade Property Appraiser publishes both on the property record, free. And what the house would actually rent for, which is where I can help with something better than a guess: what comparable homes have actually leased for, from signed leases rather than asking prices.
If the spread between those assessments is small, this whole question is academic and you should rent it out without a second thought. If it is large, it deserves an afternoon and possibly an accountant.
Common questions
Do I lose my homestead exemption if I rent out my house in Florida?
Not necessarily. Renting all or substantially all of a homesteaded dwelling counts as abandonment under section 196.061, Florida Statutes, but abandonment after 1 January does not affect that year's exemption unless the property is rented for more than 30 days per calendar year in two consecutive years. Both conditions have to be met, so a single long rental year, or a short rental every year, does not cost you the exemption.
How many days can I rent my homestead property in Florida?
Up to 30 days in a calendar year carries no risk at all. Beyond 30 days you are only at risk if you do it again the following year, because the statute requires more than 30 days in two consecutive calendar years before the exemption is lost.
Can I rent out a room and keep my homestead exemption?
Renting a room while you continue to live in the house is different from renting all or substantially all of the dwelling, which is what the statute addresses. Renting out a portion can still reduce the exemption proportionally to the part of the property no longer in residential use by the owner, so tell the property appraiser what you are doing rather than assume it is invisible.
What is the penalty for wrongly claiming a homestead exemption in Florida?
Under section 196.161, Florida Statutes, the property appraiser records a tax lien and may recover back taxes for any year within the prior ten years, plus a 50 percent penalty on the unpaid taxes for each year and 15 percent interest a year. Where the error was a clerical mistake by the appraiser's office, back taxes are limited to five years and penalties and interest are waived.
What happens to my property taxes if I lose the homestead exemption?
The assessment resets to market value and the 3 percent Save Our Homes cap is replaced by the 10 percent non-homestead cap, which does not apply to school taxes. On a property held for many years, losing the cap usually costs far more than losing the exemption itself.
Is the homestead exemption the same as the city of Homestead?
No, they are unrelated. The homestead exemption is a statewide Florida property tax benefit on your primary residence. Homestead is also a city in south Miami-Dade. You can hold the exemption anywhere in Florida, and you can own property in the city of Homestead without any exemption at all.
Work out whether it is worth renting at all
Send me the address. I will tell you what it would realistically rent for from comparable signed leases, and you can set that against what the tax bill does if the exemption goes. If the answer is that renting it out does not pay, I would rather tell you that than list it. Zac Tranten, P.A. of Keys Gate Realty, FL Lic# 3576483.
Related
General information for Florida property owners, not legal, tax or accounting advice. The rules summarised here are sections 196.061 and 196.161, Florida Statutes, as at October 2026; statutes and exemption amounts change. Your county property appraiser determines exemption status, and a decision this expensive is worth confirming with them or with an accountant before you act.