Data study · 2025 Final tax roll (Florida DOR NAL) · All 67 counties
Florida's $994.4 Billion Assessment Cap Gap
We analyzed 8.29million residential parcels on Florida's 2025 Final tax roll. The Save Our Homes 3% cap and the 10% non-homestead cap shield $994.4 billion of home value from assessment, 25.9% of all residential value in the state. And 28.4% of Florida homes get no meaningful protection at all, overwhelmingly recent buyers and new construction.
Key findings
- The cap gap is approaching $1 trillion. Across 8.29 million residential parcels, just value totals $3.84 trillion while assessed value totals $2.84 trillion, a $994.4billion differential created by Florida's assessment caps.
- Protection is wildly uneven. 5,941,130 homes (71.6%) carry real cap protection averaging $167,334 of shielded value each. The other 2,351,396 homes are assessed at essentially full market value.
- Miami-Dade leads the state with $166.3B shielded across 810,168 parcels, followed by Palm Beach ($122.0B) and Broward ($112.8B).
- Sarasota County has the largest unprotected share among counties with 50,000+ parcels: 44.2% of its homes have no meaningful cap benefit.
- The unprotected group is the one with appeal rights that matter.A capped home's assessed value is already below market, so a Value Adjustment Board petition usually has nothing to reduce. For the 2.35 million unprotected homes, assessed value tracks full market value, and an assessment error costs real money every year until it is challenged.
The cap gap, county by county
All 67 counties, ranked by total value shielded from assessment. "No protection" = assessed value within 1% of just value. Download the full table as CSV.
| # | County | Parcels | Value shielded | Avg shield (protected homes) | No protection |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Miami-Dade | 810,168 | $166.3B | $264,058 | 22.3% |
| 2 | Palm Beach | 589,278 | $122.0B | $273,076 | 24.2% |
| 3 | Broward | 677,989 | $112.8B | $209,168 | 20.5% |
| 4 | Pinellas | 389,214 | $53.2B | $181,035 | 24.6% |
| 5 | Orange | 409,263 | $47.9B | $149,175 | 21.5% |
| 6 | Hillsborough | 449,884 | $46.5B | $145,429 | 29.0% |
| 7 | Collier | 221,090 | $43.7B | $284,381 | 30.4% |
| 8 | Lee | 384,187 | $34.0B | $146,460 | 39.5% |
| 9 | Duval | 336,117 | $26.4B | $111,179 | 29.3% |
| 10 | Brevard | 263,326 | $24.2B | $133,105 | 31.1% |
| 11 | Sarasota | 236,465 | $21.4B | $162,393 | 44.2% |
| 12 | Volusia | 230,924 | $21.4B | $128,296 | 27.8% |
| 13 | Pasco | 243,505 | $19.1B | $107,426 | 26.8% |
| 14 | St. Johns | 132,035 | $17.4B | $190,426 | 30.7% |
| 15 | Manatee | 181,458 | $16.9B | $155,277 | 39.9% |
| 16 | Seminole | 152,637 | $16.8B | $144,081 | 23.6% |
| 17 | Polk | 276,993 | $16.3B | $94,374 | 37.6% |
| 18 | St. Lucie | 147,610 | $14.5B | $135,067 | 27.5% |
| 19 | Martin | 71,302 | $13.8B | $241,472 | 20.0% |
| 20 | Monroe | 43,492 | $13.3B | $432,397 | 29.1% |
| 21 | Lake | 157,013 | $12.2B | $107,696 | 28.0% |
| 22 | Indian River | 76,974 | $12.1B | $210,089 | 25.4% |
| 23 | Marion | 167,954 | $10.8B | $88,691 | 27.8% |
| 24 | Osceola | 157,610 | $10.2B | $103,511 | 37.6% |
| 25 | Charlotte | 116,815 | $7.6B | $112,581 | 41.9% |
| 26 | Walton | 57,121 | $7.4B | $212,667 | 38.9% |
| 27 | Escambia | 124,813 | $7.4B | $87,567 | 32.2% |
| 28 | Hernando | 84,477 | $7.1B | $112,630 | 25.5% |
| 29 | Alachua | 81,156 | $6.9B | $113,629 | 25.5% |
| 30 | Clay | 81,085 | $6.7B | $108,240 | 24.2% |
| 31 | Okaloosa | 89,198 | $6.1B | $113,830 | 39.5% |
| 32 | Nassau | 43,399 | $6.1B | $172,622 | 18.8% |
| 33 | Citrus | 79,112 | $5.1B | $88,115 | 26.4% |
| 34 | Sumter | 80,621 | $5.0B | $100,338 | 37.7% |
| 35 | Leon | 89,455 | $4.9B | $75,381 | 27.9% |
| 36 | Santa Rosa | 77,456 | $4.8B | $91,497 | 31.9% |
| 37 | Flagler | 61,105 | $4.7B | $122,238 | 36.4% |
| 38 | Bay | 96,070 | $4.3B | $71,374 | 36.9% |
| 39 | Highlands | 45,539 | $2.5B | $72,832 | 24.9% |
| 40 | Putnam | 36,894 | $1.8B | $70,080 | 29.4% |
| 41 | Columbia | 23,076 | $1.1B | $60,272 | 19.5% |
| 42 | Levy | 18,574 | $1.1B | $75,610 | 22.1% |
| 43 | Gulf | 9,588 | $983.5M | $149,333 | 31.3% |
| 44 | Okeechobee | 14,193 | $927.1M | $84,991 | 23.2% |
| 45 | Hendry | 13,813 | $863.5M | $89,111 | 29.9% |
| 46 | Franklin | 9,242 | $842.0M | $132,647 | 31.3% |
| 47 | Wakulla | 14,028 | $667.8M | $61,870 | 23.1% |
| 48 | DeSoto | 9,789 | $658.6M | $86,782 | 22.5% |
| 49 | Suwannee | 13,578 | $627.6M | $53,581 | 13.7% |
| 50 | Baker | 7,645 | $509.4M | $79,401 | 16.1% |
| 51 | Gadsden | 15,417 | $506.9M | $43,352 | 24.2% |
| 52 | Jackson | 13,720 | $452.0M | $44,397 | 25.8% |
| 53 | Bradford | 8,818 | $439.4M | $57,199 | 12.9% |
| 54 | Hardee | 6,360 | $425.4M | $77,243 | 13.4% |
| 55 | Taylor | 8,515 | $359.8M | $56,182 | 24.8% |
| 56 | Gilchrist | 6,545 | $344.2M | $63,801 | 17.6% |
| 57 | Washington | 8,181 | $327.4M | $52,435 | 23.7% |
| 58 | Madison | 5,255 | $239.6M | $56,933 | 19.9% |
| 59 | Jefferson | 4,348 | $206.9M | $60,784 | 21.7% |
| 60 | Glades | 4,775 | $180.3M | $53,190 | 29.0% |
| 61 | Hamilton | 3,742 | $178.7M | $54,915 | 13.0% |
| 62 | Dixie | 6,670 | $164.1M | $35,733 | 31.2% |
| 63 | Holmes | 4,963 | $99.5M | $21,923 | 8.6% |
| 64 | Calhoun | 3,809 | $98.4M | $33,088 | 22.0% |
| 65 | Lafayette | 1,922 | $60.0M | $45,526 | 31.4% |
| 66 | Union | 2,841 | $43.5M | $23,154 | 34.0% |
| 67 | Liberty | 2,315 | $40.8M | $34,154 | 48.4% |
Methodology
Source.The Florida Department of Revenue's 2025 Final NAL (Name-Address-Legal) assessment roll, the statewide per-parcel file compiled from all 67 county Property Appraisers. We loaded every residential-use parcel (DOR use codes under 1000) into our production database.
Computation. For each parcel with positive just value and assessed value, the cap gap is max(just value − assessed value, 0). Parcels where assessed value exceeded 1.5× just value were excluded as data errors (499 parcels, 0.006% of the roll). A home is counted as having "no meaningful protection" when its gap is 1% of just value or less.
What this is not.This study does not claim any home is over-assessed. It measures the differential Florida's own roll documents between market-basis just value and capped assessed value, the combined effect of the Save Our Homes amendment (Fla. Const. Art. VII, §4(d)) on homesteads and the 10% cap on non-homestead residential property.
Reproducibility. The NAL roll is public. The full county table is downloadable at florida-cap-gap-2025.csv and free to republish with attribution (CC BY 4.0).
Cite this study
AppealMyTax, "Florida's $994.4Billion Assessment Cap Gap" (2026), analysis of the 2025 Final FL DOR NAL roll. Available at https://appealmytax.dev/study/florida-cap-gap.
Journalists and researchers: the data is free to use with a link back to this page. County-level or ZIP-level cuts beyond the CSV are available on request, john@revxl.net.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Save Our Homes cap gap?+
The gap between what Florida homes are worth on the county rolls (just value) and what they are actually assessed at after Florida's assessment caps: the 3% Save Our Homes cap on homesteads and the 10% cap on non-homestead property. On the 2025 Final roll, that gap totals $994.4 billion across 8.29 million residential parcels, 25.9% of all residential value in the state.
Who gets no benefit from Save Our Homes?+
28.4% of Florida homes, about 2.35 million parcels, carry no meaningful cap protection (their assessed value is within 1% of their just value). These are overwhelmingly recent buyers, whose cap reset to full market value the January after purchase, plus new construction and newly reassessed parcels. They pay tax on full market value while a long-held identical home next door may be assessed at a fraction of that.
Where does the data come from?+
From the Florida Department of Revenue's 2025 Final NAL assessment roll, the same statewide file county Property Appraisers submit. We analyzed every residential parcel with positive just and assessed value across all 67 counties. The full county table is downloadable as CSV and free to cite with attribution.
Does a VAB appeal help if I'm protected by the cap?+
Usually no. If your assessed value is already far below market because of Save Our Homes, an appeal has nothing to reduce. Appeals matter for the unprotected group: recent buyers, non-homesteaded property, and new construction, where the assessment tracks full market value and errors cost real money every year.
In the unprotected 28.4%?
If you bought recently, own a rental or second home, or built new, your assessment tracks full market value, and errors cost you every year. Check your address free against this same statewide roll in 30 seconds. If there's a case, the $49 kit arrives with your DR-486 VAB petition pre-filled.
Check my Florida address free →Related: Does Save Our Homes affect my appeal? · TRIM 2026 hub · All data studies