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The Florida Landlord Brief — a weekly read on Florida rentals, from True North Managed · Orlando & Tampa.

Hi again — property taxes this week, and for once there's a piece of the news that's actually pointed at rental owners instead of past them.

You've probably seen the headlines about the property-tax measure on Florida's November ballot. Almost all of the coverage is about the homestead exemption jumping toward $150,000, then $250,000 — and that part does nothing for your rental, because homestead breaks are for owner-occupants only. Easy to read that and tune the whole thing out.

Here's the part worth un-tuning. The same measure heading to voters in November carries one change that lands squarely on you: it lowers the annual cap on how much your property's assessed value can rise, from 10% down to 5%. Non-homestead property — your rentals, second homes, commercial — has been shielded by a 10% assessment cap for more than fifteen years. If this passes, that shield tightens to 5% a year starting in 2027. In a market where values keep grinding upward, that's the difference between your tax bill creeping up and it jogging up.

How I read it: don't bank on it yet. It's a November vote, it needs 60% to pass, and nothing changes on your 2026 bill either way. What I'd actually do now is small — run your 2027 reserve math both ways, at today's 10% cap and at 5%, so whichever way the vote breaks, your numbers already hold. Property tax is one of the three costs that quietly decide whether a Florida rental cash-flows, next to insurance and maintenance — and unlike the other two, this one you can see coming.

Forget the ballot for a second, though — the real move this summer is the envelope headed for your mailbox. Your county mails its TRIM notice, the proposed-taxes postcard, in mid-August, and it's the one moment each year you can actually push back on your assessment. Pull it the day it lands, check the market value the county assigned against what similar homes near you actually sold for, and if it's high, you've got a tight window — roughly 25 days — to petition the Value Adjustment Board. Most owners glance at it and file it away. Read yours, and you might catch a few hundred dollars of overcharge before it locks in for the year. Our guide to property tax on a Florida rental walks both the read and the appeal.

To put a number on why the cap matters: on a rental the county values at $400,000, a 10% cap lets the assessment jump $40,000 in a hot year; a 5% cap holds it to $20,000. At a typical Orlando or Tampa millage rate that gap is a few hundred dollars — and it compounds every year the market runs.

Since we're on taxes: our Florida Landlord Tax Deduction Cheat Sheet covers the other side of the ledger — the income-tax deductions that add up fast, the property tax you just paid among them. One page, free, built for exactly this.

That's it for this week. More soon — and if something about your place is on your mind, you know where the reply button is.

— The True North Team

General info for Florida rental owners — not legal, tax, or insurance advice.