Estimate your Miami-Dade property tax before you buy: the reset, the millage and the TRIM
Last reviewed: November 9, 2026. Sources for this page are listed in its fact sheet.
Short answer first. The tax figure in the listing is the seller's bill, and the seller's bill is capped. When you buy, the cap comes off, the property is assessed at full market value on the next January 1, and your bill is computed on roughly your purchase price. Buyers who budget off the listing number underfund their first year by thousands. This page shows you the arithmetic the Property Appraiser's own records support: where to pull the real figures, which millage table governs your address, how the homestead exemptions layer in, and what Amendment 3 changes in 2027 and 2028. Work it before you offer, not after you close.
Keys change hands at closing. The tax reset starts with that signature. Stock photo. Photo: Pavel Danilyuk, Pexels.
Step 1: pull the property's record
Start in the Miami-Dade Property Appraiser's property search, at miamidade.gov/pa. Pull three numbers for any home you're serious about: the current just (market) value, the current assessed value, and the current taxable value. The gap between just value and assessed value is the seller's Save Our Homes benefit sitting in plain sight. Save Our Homes caps annual assessed increases at 3 percent or the inflation rate, whichever is lower (the cap ran 2.9 percent for 2025), and that benefit does not transfer to you. It passes only between spouses, to legal or natural dependents, or to fix a title error. A normal sale resets it to zero.
Step 2: find your millage, not the county average
Your total rate is the sum of the county, city, school, and district levies where the home sits, and it swings hard by address. In the Property Appraiser's adopted 2025 table, totals run from 15.5108 mills in Key Biscayne to 24.0024 mills in Opa-Locka. The City of Miami totals 19.9878 mills, split 13.4888 non-school and 6.4990 school. Unincorporated county totals 16.9317. A mill is a dollar per $1,000 of taxable value, so on the same $600,000 taxable value the Key Biscayne bill and the Opa-Locka bill differ by about $5,100 a year. Jurisdiction first. Averages lie.
Step 3: apply the exemptions in the right order
Homestead cuts taxable value, and it cuts the two halves differently. The first $25,000 comes off every levy, schools included. A second exemption applies to assessed value between $50,000 and $75,000 and touches non-school levies only; inflation adjustments put it at $26,411 for 2026, so the most a homestead can shelter in 2026 is $51,411 against non-school levies and $25,000 against school levies. Anyone who quotes you $51,411 off the whole bill is doing the math wrong.
Amendment 3, approved by voters on November 3, 2026, rewrites the non-school side from January 1, 2027: the non-school exemption rises to up to $150,000 in 2027 and up to $250,000 in 2028, with inflation adjustments from 2029, while school levies stay at $25,000 throughout. New arrivals get their own ramp: take title on or after January 1, 2027 without a Florida permanent residence held at December 31, 2026 and you start at $50,000 non-school, reaching the full amount in your fifth year. The same amendment drops the non-homestead assessment cap for non-school levies from 10 percent to 5 percent in 2027, and it leaves Save Our Homes and the $500,000 portability benefit alone. The deadline side of this is in the Amendment 3 guide.
Worked example: an $800,000 City of Miami home
Say the home sells for $800,000 and the seller, capped for years, is assessed at $520,000. At the adopted 2025 City of Miami rates (19.9878 total: 6.4990 school, 13.4888 non-school), with homestead in place:
The seller's 2026 bill: school taxable $495,000 times 6.4990 mills is about $3,217; non-school taxable $468,589 times 13.4888 mills is about $6,321. Total about $9,538.
Your year one bill at the reset $800,000, under 2026 law: school taxable $775,000 is about $5,037; non-school taxable $748,589 is about $10,098. Total about $15,134. The reset alone costs about $5,600 a year against the seller's number, before Amendment 3 enters.
Your 2027 bill at the same value under Amendment 3's $150,000 non-school exemption: non-school taxable falls to $650,000, about $8,768, and the total lands near $13,804. In 2028, at $250,000, non-school taxable is $550,000, about $7,419, and the total lands near $12,455. Same house, same rates, three very different bills. That spread is why this estimate belongs in the offer math next to the mortgage, a comparison the rent or buy guide runs in full.
Step 4: add what millage misses
The November bill also carries non-ad valorem assessments, charges priced by cost of service rather than value. Solid waste, community development districts, PACE districts, and special districts for street lighting, security, and landscaping sit in this section, and a CDD line in a newer suburb can run into the thousands. One local correction: in Miami-Dade, fire rescue is an ad valorem levy inside the millage, not a non-ad valorem charge, whatever a summary site tells you. The TRIM notice shows both sections for the exact property, which is why you read it line by line.
The calendar: TRIM, appeal, and the discount ladder
The Property Appraiser mails the TRIM notice, your proposed bill, every August. It is an estimate, not a bill, and it starts your appeal clock: a petition to the Value Adjustment Board is due no later than 25 days after the TRIM mailing (the 2026 deadline was September 18, 2026). Final bills are payable from November 1, and paying early pays you: 4 percent off in November, 3 in December, 2 in January, 1 in February, nothing in March, delinquent April 1. On the $13,804 bill above, the November discount alone is about $552. File the estimate, then file the homestead itself; the homestead filing guide covers the March 1 deadline and the document list. As the final check on any address, run the Property Appraiser's own online tax estimator from miamidade.gov/pa against your numbers. If your arithmetic and the estimator disagree, trust the estimator and find your error.
Sources and check dates
Reset mechanics and exemption rules are from the Miami-Dade Property Appraiser, including its Save Our Homes and homestead pages, checked November 9, 2026. Millage totals are the Appraiser's adopted 2025 chart, the same table this site's relocation cluster has used since November 4, 2026. Amendment 3 figures are from the enrolled text of CS/HJR 1-F via the Florida Senate. The TRIM, appeal, and discount calendar is from the Property Appraiser, the Clerk's Value Adjustment Board pages, and the Tax Collector. Rates are adopted 2025 figures used as a worked example; your tax year uses the rates adopted for that year.