Governor Ron DeSantis is selling his marquee property tax proposal with a bold promise: expand Florida’s homestead exemption to $500,000 and eliminate property taxes for 92% of homeowners in the state. But analysts at investment bank UBS are pumping the brakes, and they’re using Florida’s own government data to do it.
In a research note published Wednesday, UBS flagged a notable discrepancy between the numbers DeSantis cited and those from the Florida Office of Economic and Demographic Research, the state’s own fiscal analysis arm. According to the governor, lifting the homestead exemption to $250,000 would wipe out property taxes for roughly 60% of Florida homeowners. But the state’s own data tells a more modest story: only about 47% of homesteaded properties in Florida are valued at $250,000 or less, UBS noted. At the $500,000 threshold—again, where DeSantis promised 92% coverage—Florida’s own data pegs the share at just 75% to 80%.
That’s a gap of more than 12 percentage points between the governor’s headline promise and what independent state analysis supports.
Currently, the homestead exemption sits at $50,000, affecting just 0.5% of all homestead parcels in the state. DeSantis called a special legislative session to advance the proposal, which would start by raising the homestead exemption to $250,000, with a path toward $500,000 over time. To become law, it would need 60% approval from state lawmakers, followed by 60% voter approval on the November ballot. A residency requirement of at least five years would apply to new Florida residents.
Separate reporting from the Florida Office of Economic and Demographic Research found that about 28% of homestead parcels have a median assessed value of $250,000 or below, an even sharper contrast to DeSantis’s figure. Redfin data from March put Florida’s median home sale price at $416,800.
UBS analysts did not dismiss the proposal entirely. The firm said the plan “could positively impact affordability” in the state, pointing to initial estimates based on county appraiser data, suggesting average annual property tax savings of $1,800 in Broward County and $1,500 in Miami-Dade. The analysts also noted the legislation could act as a tailwind for public homebuilders with significant Florida exposure, including Lennar, D.R. Horton, and PulteGroup, each of which derives between 17% and 25% of its estimated 2025 deliveries from the state.
The proposal is not without precedent, or failure. In February, the Florida House passed a version of non-school homestead property tax elimination, only to see it die in the state Senate. Skeptics, including former state Senator Jeff Brandes, have questioned whether the plan fully accounts for its fiscal impact on local governments, noting that property taxes currently fund schools, police, and firefighters across Florida’s counties.
House Minority Leader Fentrice Driskell, a Democrat from Tampa, said the proposal could take from the very thing DeSantis wants to fund.
“Any cut, even though it might seem small in the grand scheme of things, could be devastating. There is no plan to make our local governments whole on the back end,” Driskell said on Tuesday. “Property taxes cover the costs of law enforcement and first responders. They make sure that you can visit the library without having to pay a fee. Once you start explaining these things, you start to understand that property taxes are not the real enemy here.”
DeSantis has proposed a trust funded by surplus state revenue to help rural counties offset lost revenue, but critics say details remain thin on how that fund would scale to cover the broader shortfall if the exemption expands to $500,000.
For this story, Fortune journalists used generative AI as a research tool. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.
