Florida Homestead Exemption Explained Easily

Are you confused about Florida property taxes? But more specifically, the homestead exemption in Florida? How it works? The advantages of it? And the deadline to file for it? And, where you can get more information about it? If you have additional questions, today I'm gonna cover all of that, so stay tuned. I am Traci Tam of Florida real estate broker. And this channel is about life and living in the South Florida area and all things real estate so if you haven't done so already make sure that you hit that subscribe button and tap that bell so you don't miss out on our weekly videos. A lot of people are very confused, when they first move to Florida, or when they first buy their first home in Florida, about our homestead exemption. It's a lot different in Florida, than in most other states, and it has a lot more benefits also, than many other states. There are three big advantages, to the homestead exemption in the state of Florida, and today we're going to talk about all three of those and a few other questions that I get asked a lot about the homestead exemption but we're going to start backwards with number three. Number three, is a $50000 Exemption. So, what does that exactly mean? Let's say that you purchased a house for $300000. They're going to tax you probably about 85%, and that's gonna come up with your assessed value. Now it could be lower, and in a lot of cases I do see that assessed value lower but for this example we're gonna use about 85% of that $300000 purchase price and that's gonna give us, an assessed value of $255000. So, we take $50000 for that exemption off, that assessed value of $255000 for that purchase price of $300000 and we end up with $205000 that are assessed for our taxes. And then you go to whether it's your city or your village. For me, I live in an unincorporated Dade. For this example, we're gonna use unincorporated Dade, and we're gonna pull up this chart and you can see right here, that unincorporated Dade, has a millage rate of 17.7054 or 17.7% and if you times that 0.17 by that $205000 taxable amount you will get your taxes for that $300000 home in unincorporated Miami-Dade County and that will equal $3485, for this example. If you bought in a community with CDD fees, you're going to have to add that fee on top of your property taxes. So a lot of people get confused about this but let's be very clear, the CDD fees are included in your property tax bill. CDD stands for Community Development District, and it's a fee that is included on that property tax bill. Not sure what CDD fees are, don't worry I'm going to make an upcoming video about that. And you especially wanna check that out if you're thinking about moving to Florida, or buying in Florida and one of our new construction developments, because most of those do have CDD fees and most of the homes that were built within the last 20 to 30 years, they also will have CDD fees, so just make yourself aware, what they are, what's included in them? What can be included in them? And that they are included as part of your property tax bill in the state of Florida. Number two, is Creditor Exemption. Creditors cannot go after your primary residence in the state of Florida. If you are in a big lawsuit, now for disclosure I'm not an attorney so I would definitely suggest that you seek legal advice. But if you are in a big lawsuit, it is my understanding in the state of Florida, your primary homesteaded property is protected. It's protected from lawsuits, judgment, creditors, and a good example that most people talk about, who took all a lot of their money and bought a large home in the state of Florida when they were going through a big trial and a lot of different lawsuits is O.J. Simpson. And actually Wikipedia, states as an example for our Creditor Exemption in the state of Florida they actually use O.J. Simpson as an example on their site. And the number one biggest advantage to the homestead exemption in the state of Florida is the 3% max, that your assessed value can go up any year every year, as long as it's your homesteaded property. Let's go back to that example that we used that $300000 home with the assessed value of $255, 000 which we said was probably about that 85% which is normally what they're going to assess the value of the home for. That $255000, cannot go up more than 3% each year as long as it's your homesteaded property. This is a huge advantage because sometimes home prices appreciate 8 to 10% especially in Florida and in South Florida, they've appreciated in some areas more than that. In 2018 and 2019 right now we're in 2020, so that 3% cap is a big big advantage, in the state of Florida and most other states don't have that. Be very careful, not to look at the previous owner's taxes and do the tax estimator on your local government site and we're actually gonna go into a couple of sites so I can show you how to use ours in Miami-Dade County. It'd be interested in looking at a tax bill just to see what is included on that tax bill and what you're actually paying for such as fire rescue and streets and schools or whatever else may be on there like we discussed before maybe that CDD fee which is also on that tax bill. So I'm gonna go and show you how to get to a property tax bill in my county because that's where I live in Miami-Dade County. So, let's get started. miamidade.gov and then we are going to scroll down, to right here where it says Property Search and up here where it says ONLINE TOOLS, we're going to click on that. Then we're going to come down here to where it says TRIM Notice and we're going to click on that. Then we're gonna see right here, where it says View Real Estate TRIM Notices and if you don't happen to know the folio number you can look it up here and that's gonna take you to the miamidade.gov Property Search and you can type in the name or the address of the tax bill that you would like to see and on that it's gonna give you the folio number. But for these purposes I already have one, then you click on View TRIM and this will pull up the detailed tax bill and we're going  to go to the one where I've actually erased the private information just for privacy purposes. So what's this is going to show you is it's gonna show you what the school taxes is, the percentages, the dollar amount for fire rescue and everything else on the tax bill. It's also going to give you the public hearing dates right here and their phone numbers. This is very important, this bill also there's a CDD tax because maybe you wanna call and ask questions about what is in the CDD fee. So right here this is in the bay one CDD, Community Development District and here's the phone number. So they're assessing $1187.30, you might wanna call that phone number and see what type of bond that they have. How long the bond is going to last for? Is it a 20 year or 30-year bond? When was the bond taken out? And what else is actually included in that CDD fee, such as maintenance fees? Sometimes if you have a real low HOA, on some of the communities that you're thinking about buying in they might have taken some of those maintenance fees and included them in the CDD fee, because remember you're going to be paying for those fees either on the back-end or the front-end but somewhere, so definitely get an idea of what is actually in that fee. A few more questions that I get asked a lot about the homestead exemption are, number one, what's the deadline for filing? The deadline for filing is March 1st. Number two, is what are the qualifications to file? The only qualification to file for a homestead exemption is that you have to have lived in that property as of January 1st of the year that you are filing. The number three, frequently asked questions that I get about the homestead exemption are, what are the documents that are needed to file? So we're going to include this link as a PDF and the description, but the Exemption Application Guidelines, you're going to need one of the following. Proof of January 1st ownership, either a pre-printed application mailed to you by the property appraisers or a recorded warranty deed. You're also going to need one of the following issued prior to January 1st. A valid Florida driver's license or ID card, a Florida vehicle registration, a Florida voters registration, Prior year's IRS return or current W-2 form. Bank statements and checking accounts registered at the property, that you're trying to make your homesteaded property, or proof of payments for utilities at that property. The fourth question I get asked a lot is, do you have to file every single year? And the answer is no, you only have to file once and then if you do move out of the property or the property is rented then you have to notify the property appraiser's office but as long as you're living in the home, you only have to file once for the homestead exemption on it. So hopefully this video answered some questions and confusion that you might have had about Florida's homestead exemption. If you bought a home with us, Top Tier Realty in 2019, you should be getting all of the paperwork that you need to file for your taxes and your homestead exemption in the mail, and will also send you a link with all of the links that I mentioned in this video via email. Just in case you've misplaced your documents to file for your homestead exemption, don't worry because everything will be coming to you in the mail. All of the links and all of the sites that I've mentioned in this video, we're going to leave in the description below. I'm also going to leave a link to my relocation guide just in case you are thinking about moving to South Florida feel free to click on that and download it. Now it might ask you for your name or your email address just to make sure that you're not a bot, don't worry we're not going to spam you. We hate spam just as much as you. As always, thanks for watching #TALKWITHTRACI about life and living in the South Florida area and all things real estate. and we'll see you next week.

Links below for Filing Your Homestead Exemption in Miami Dade County, Florida:
File On-Line- On Line Application:
http://bit.ly/37kp6RC
Exemption Application Guidelines:
http://bit.ly/2undkr7
F.A.Q.:
http://bit.ly/37lMSwP

Top Tier Realty Resource Guides:
Relocation Guide-
https://toptierre.com/p/22204/top-tie...
Sellers Guide-
www.TopTierSellerGuide.com
Buyers Guide-
www.TopTierBuyersGuide.com
Category
People & Blogs