How Appeal Season decides whether your Florida property is overassessed

The most direct way is to compare your county's assessed just value against what comparable homes near you actually sold for in a qualified, arms-length sale. Appeal Season does this for free: enter your address and it pulls your county's current assessment, finds qualified comparable sales near your property, and shows the gap between what the county says your home is worth and what the market says.

A large gap does not automatically mean you should appeal. Florida's Save Our Homes cap (below) means many homeowners with a real gap are still fully protected and would gain nothing from filing.

Yes, significantly. A homesteaded property in Florida is also protected by the Save Our Homes cap, which limits how much its ASSESSED value can grow each year, regardless of how much the market value has grown. The longer you have owned and homesteaded a property, the more likely your assessed value sits well below its market value, and the less an appeal (which challenges market value) can do for your tax bill.

Save Our Homes limits the year-over-year growth of a homesteaded property's ASSESSED value to 3% (or the change in the Consumer Price Index, whichever is lower), even when the property's market value rises faster. Over years of ownership this creates a gap between assessed value and market value, called the Save Our Homes differential.

An appeal challenges the county's determination of MARKET value (just value), not assessed value. If your assessed value is already far below market value because of a large accumulated cap, winning an appeal on market value does nothing to your tax bill: your taxable value is still governed by the capped assessed value. This is why Appeal Season tells a large share of long-tenured homesteaded owners, honestly, that they have no appeal savings available, rather than selling them a case that cannot change their bill.

• Recent buyers (roughly 2023 to 2025) with little or no Save Our Homes gap yet: a purchase resets the assessment conversation, so an overshoot in the county's estimate flows more directly to the tax bill.
• Non-homestead owners (rentals, second homes, investment property): the 3% Save Our Homes cap does not apply to non-homestead property, so there is no accumulated cushion protecting them from an overassessment.
• Homes with data errors on the property record (wrong square footage, bed/bath count, or condition).
• Homes with negative characteristics a mass-appraisal model tends to miss (deferred maintenance, a busy road, an odd lot).
• Homes whose nearby comparable sales are dominated by recently renovated or flipped properties that overstate the neighborhood's typical value.

• Long-tenured homesteaded owners with a large Save Our Homes gap between assessed and market value.
• Owners already assessed at or below the typical comparable-sale value in their neighborhood.

Appeal Season's free check identifies both groups and says so plainly. It does not offer the paid case-building workspace ($69 one-time, or the $99/yr Tax Watch) to a property with no real appeal savings.

The assessment date for Florida property taxes is January 1 each year. Homestead exemption applications are generally due by March 1. Counties mail the TRIM (Truth in Millage) notice, typically in August, showing your proposed assessed and taxable value and the proposed millage rates.

From the date a county mails its TRIM notices, Florida law gives you 25 days to file a value or portability petition with the Value Adjustment Board (VAB). VAB hearings must be noticed at least 25 days in advance, and evidence exchange rules apply before the hearing (both sides must exchange evidence on request, on a schedule set by statute). An informal review with the property appraiser's office does not pause this clock: file the petition regardless, and it can be withdrawn later if the informal review resolves things first.

Yes. Petitioning over value does not excuse you from paying. Florida law requires you to pay all non-ad valorem assessments and at least 75% of the ad valorem (value-based) taxes before they become delinquent, or the Value Adjustment Board can dismiss your petition. Appeal Season surfaces this requirement directly in every filing guide; it is never buried.

Every number a user sees comes from deterministic TypeScript math over public county assessment records and qualified, arms-length comparable sales, never from a language model. The verdict has four tiers: strong, possible (borderline), weak, and capped (protected by Save Our Homes, nothing to file this year).

When a county's recent qualified-sale volume is thin relative to its parcel count, the engine switches to a conservative mode: it will not return a strong verdict and widens its savings estimate, so a thin comparable-sales market never oversells a case. An AI model is used only to write the plain-language explanation of a verdict already computed by code; it never calculates a figure a user sees.

No. Appeal Season is informational software. It never files a petition, represents a homeowner before the Value Adjustment Board, or guarantees any outcome. The homeowner is always the one who files, attends the hearing, and makes the final call. Appeal Season builds the evidence and explains the process; it does not act on the homeowner's behalf.

For homeowners who want an ongoing case-building workspace, Appeal Season offers a $69 one-time evidence packet, a $99/yr Tax Watch subscription, and a portfolio plan at $49/parcel/yr (3-parcel minimum) for landlords and investors. All prices are shown before any signup.