Florida Policy Project

Amendment 3: The War on Starter Homes Nobody Saw Coming I’ve spent a lot of time studying Florida’s housing market, and I see a perfect storm forming. An aging population. A coming wave of older homes entering the market. Builders offering incentives existing homeowners can’t match. Rising insurance and ownership costs. And first-time buyers increasingly priced out. Now add Amendment 3. It could push home prices higher as tax savings get capitalized into property values, without adding a single home to the market. But here’s the unintended consequence nobody is talking about. Florida says it wants more starter homes. Amendment 3 could give local governments a financial incentive to approve fewer of them. The $250,000 non-school homestead exemption will be indexed to inflation, eventually exceeding $300,000. That means many starter homes could generate little or no municipal property tax revenue while still requiring police, fire, roads, and other services. We’re asking communities to build more affordable housing while potentially making those homes less financially attractive to approve. Making homes cheaper to own doesn’t necessarily make them cheaper to buy. And making starter homes a fiscal liability won’t help us build more of them. Read the full thread. This is about much more than property taxes.