Market Brief

The homestead exemption is the headline. The cap on everything else is the story.

Florida Realtors endorsed Amendment 3 on Saturday. It would lift the homestead exemption to $250,000 by 2028 and halve the non-homestead cap.

The daily read on the numbers that set Florida housing costs: tax policy, insurance, mortgage rates and construction, and what they mean for a buyer or seller in Northeast Florida this week.

Florida Realtors put its name on Amendment 3 this weekend

On Saturday, August 23, the Florida Realtors Board of Directors voted to endorse Amendment 3, the property tax measure on the November 3 ballot. That is the only Florida-specific development of real consequence to break in the last three days, and it lands on a measure that was in legal trouble as recently as ten days ago.

The ballot language had to be rewritten after a judge ruled the original version misleading. The replacement surfaced around August 14. The measure needs 60 percent voter approval to pass.

What the amendment actually changes

Two things, and they are not equally well understood.

The first is the one that gets the coverage. The homestead exemption would rise from $50,000 to $150,000 in 2027 and $250,000 in 2028. For an owner-occupied home, that is a fivefold increase in the slice of assessed value shielded from most property tax.

The second is the annual assessment cap on non-homestead property, which would fall from 10 percent to 5 percent.

If you want to see what the first change does to a specific bill, our Florida property tax amendment calculator runs the math by county, and the county-by-county property tax pages carry the current millage picture.

The second provision is the one nobody is pricing

Halving the non-homestead cap is a structural change to the carrying cost of every Florida property that is not somebody's primary residence. That includes second homes, long-term rentals and most of the coastal condominium stock.

Under a 10 percent cap, assessed value on those properties can climb quickly through a rising market. Under a 5 percent cap it cannot. The effect compounds: the longer a property is held, the further its assessed value drifts below market, in exactly the way Save Our Homes has worked on homestead property for three decades.

We are not going to tell you how to vote on it, and we are not going to forecast the outcome. What we will say is that the second provision has a larger effect on the investor and second-home segments than the headline exemption does, and it is getting a fraction of the attention.

Citizens depopulation just stopped

This is the number that changed shape this month and it has gone unremarked.

Citizens Property Insurance policies in force stood at 278,196 on July 31, down from 771,916 a year earlier. That is a 64 percent decline in twelve months, and roughly 80 percent off the peak near 1.4 million in October 2023. The depopulation program has been the dominant Florida insurance story for two years.

Now look at the last two months. June 30: 278,246. July 31: 278,196.

A decline of fifty policies. After eighteen months of steep, uninterrupted falls, the line has gone flat. One month is not a trend and we are not calling it one. But the population that was going to move to the private market may have largely moved, and if that is what this is, the easy phase of Florida's insurance recovery is behind us rather than ahead of us.

Rates are still improving. Citizens' 2026 multiperil filing cuts rates statewide by an average of 8.7 percent, with more than 330,000 policyholders across all 67 counties seeing a decrease.

Rates eased again, and the construction pipeline kept thinning

Freddie Mac put the 30-year fixed at 6.65 percent for the week ending August 20, down from 6.67 percent and the second consecutive weekly decline. The 15-year sits at 5.95 percent. Note what that does and does not mean: a year ago the 30-year was 6.58 percent, so despite two down weeks the rate is still 7 basis points higher than it was last August.

The relief is coming from spread compression rather than from the bond market, where the long end has backed up materially this year. We are not publishing a precise 10-year Treasury figure today because we could not confirm an August value against Treasury's own daily series; the aggregator readings available to us disagreed with each other.

The construction data released August 18 is the harder number. In the South region, which contains Florida, total housing starts ran a 645,000 annual rate in July, down 24.1 percent year over year, a decline large enough to be statistically significant at the 90 percent confidence interval. Single-family starts in the South fell 16.2 percent. Permits in the same region were roughly flat.

Builders are still pulling paper and not breaking ground. Southern units under construction are down 8.9 percent year over year, which thins the 2027 delivery pipeline in Florida specifically.

The Florida condo numbers in circulation do not match the primary data

A set of figures is circulating that describes a Florida condominium collapse: 13.2 months of supply, close to 80,000 units for sale and up about 35 percent year over year, prices down 6.1 percent. We have seen them repeated widely, and we could not trace any of them to a dated primary release.

Florida Realtors' own July 2026 MLS report, released August 17, says something different. Condo and townhouse closed sales 8,194, up 11.0 percent year over year. Median price $295,000, unchanged. Active inventory 60,962, down 12.9 percent. Months supply 7.8, down from 9.6.

We are carrying both because we cannot reconcile them, and we are telling you which one we would use. The primary release is the one with a name, a date and a methodology attached.

There is real stress in the Florida data, but it is narrower than the circulating version and it is in a different place. Condo time to contract rose to 76 days from 68, up 11.8 percent, even as sales rose and inventory fell. And on the single-family side, foreclosure and REO closings rose 51.3 percent year over year, with those REO medians down 14 percent, though at 230 of 23,870 closings that is still under one percent of the market.

What this means for a Northeast Florida buyer or seller

If you own a homestead property, Amendment 3 is a November decision with a 2027 and 2028 effect, not something that changes your bill this year.

If you own or are buying a second home, a rental or a condominium, the non-homestead cap provision is the part to read carefully, because it changes a carrying cost you will hold for as long as you own the property.

If you are selling a condominium, the market data says you are not in a collapse, but you are in a market where the median unit is taking about eight days longer to go under contract than a year ago. Price and preparation are doing more work than they were.

If you are waiting for rates, two consecutive weekly declines have still left you slightly worse off than last August. Our Jacksonville housing market data tracks the local side of this monthly.

People also ask

What would Amendment 3 do to Florida property taxes?

It would raise the homestead exemption from $50,000 to $150,000 in 2027 and $250,000 in 2028, and separately cut the annual assessment increase cap on non-homestead property from 10 percent to 5 percent. It appears on the November 3, 2026 ballot and needs 60 percent voter approval. The ballot language was rewritten in August after a judge ruled the original version misleading.

Are Florida condo prices falling in 2026?

Not according to the primary MLS data. Florida Realtors reported a July 2026 statewide condo and townhouse median of $295,000, unchanged year over year, with closed sales up 11.0 percent and active inventory down 12.9 percent. Widely circulated figures showing a 6.1 percent price decline and roughly 80,000 listings could not be traced to a dated primary source. The measurable change is time: median days to contract rose to 76 from 68.

Why did Citizens Property Insurance stop shrinking?

Citizens policies in force fell from 771,916 in August 2025 to 278,196 at the end of July 2026, a 64 percent decline. Between June 30 and July 31, 2026, the count fell by only 50 policies. That is a plateau after eighteen months of steep declines, and the most likely reading is that the policies that could readily be moved to the private market have largely moved. One month is not a trend and this should be watched rather than concluded.

Sources and links

• Florida Realtors, "Florida Realtors Supports Property Tax Reform," August 23, 2026
• Florida Realtors, July 2026 Florida single-family and condo/townhouse market summaries, released August 17, 2026
• Citizens Property Insurance, Policies in Force, figures as of July 31, 2026
• Citizens Property Insurance / Florida OIR, 2026 multiperil rate filing
• Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey, week ending August 20, 2026
• U.S. Census Bureau and HUD, New Residential Construction, July 2026 (CB26-127), released August 18, 2026

Disclosure: Jon Brooks is a co-founder of Momentum Realty, a Florida real estate brokerage that owns and funds Florida Housing Intelligence. Momentum has a financial interest in Florida real estate transactions, including in markets named here. See our editorial standards.