The same house, $3,000 apart: property tax across Florida counties

How much does the county actually change your tax bill?

On a $400,000 home with homestead exemption, the gap between the highest-millage county and the lowest is $4,732 a year — $394 a month.

That is not a rounding difference. That is a car payment. The calculation uses Florida’s standard homestead exemption: the first $25,000 of assessed value is fully exempt, and another $26,411 is exempt from the non-school portion of the millage. Apply those exemptions to a $400,000 house in Monroe County and you owe about $2,949 a year. Apply them in Saint Lucie County and you owe about $7,681. Same house. Same price. Different county.

What is a mill, and why does it matter more than the tax rate headline?

One mill equals $1 of tax for every $1,000 of taxable value. Saint Lucie runs 21.5570 mills total; Monroe runs 8.2361. That 13-plus-mill difference is what produces the $4,732 gap.

Your millage bill has two main pieces: the school portion and everything else — county government, water management, emergency services, and any special districts. The school mills across all 67 counties range from 2.9470 (Monroe) to 6.8650. The non-school piece swings even wider: Monroe’s 5.2891 versus Saint Lucie’s 15.2610. The non-school side is where most of the county-to-county difference lives.

Which counties cost the most?

Saint Lucie leads at about $7,681 a year, followed by Alachua at about $7,447 and Broward at about $7,096.

Broward — home to Fort Lauderdale — surprises people who assume South Florida’s glamour counties must be its cheapest. Miami-Dade comes in at about $6,620, only slightly behind Broward. Hillsborough (Tampa) runs about $6,740. Pinellas (St. Petersburg) is about $6,613. These are real cities with real infrastructure bills, and the millage reflects that.

Which counties cost the least?

Monroe County (the Florida Keys) has the lowest millage of any county in the state, producing a bill of about $2,949 on a $400,000 home — less than half what you’d pay in Saint Lucie.

Walton County on the Panhandle comes second at about $3,303, and Collier (Naples area) third at about $3,535. Franklin County, also on the Panhandle, runs about $3,806. Sumter — known for The Villages — is about $4,036. Low millage does not mean low total cost of ownership; home prices in Monroe and Collier are well above the state median, so a lower rate can still produce a large absolute bill on a pricier property. Run your numbers on your actual purchase price, not on the $400,000 benchmark.

Is the Panhandle really cheaper than the rest of Florida?

For property tax, yes — several Panhandle counties rank among the ten lowest in the state.

Okaloosa (Destin area) comes in at about $4,422. Gulf County at about $4,400. Santa Rosa at about $4,227. Bay County, where Panama City sits, at about $4,567. All of them undercut Miami-Dade by more than $2,000 a year on the same house. If you are comparing a Panhandle relocation against a Tampa Bay or South Florida one purely on property tax, the Panhandle wins by a wide margin.

What does this mean for a $400,000 purchase in the ten highest and ten lowest counties?

The table below shows the annual bill and the monthly equivalent for each county in both groups, calculated on a $400,000 home with the standard homestead exemption.

County	Total mills	Annual tax	Monthly
Ten highest
Saint Lucie	21.5570	~$7,681	~$640
Alachua	20.8894	~$7,447	~$621
Dixie	19.8732	~$7,070	~$589
Broward	19.8638	~$7,096	~$591
Hillsborough	18.8553	~$6,740	~$562
Pinellas	18.4941	~$6,613	~$551
Miami-Dade	18.4893	~$6,620	~$552
Glades	18.3732	~$6,545	~$545
Duval	17.8910	~$6,404	~$534
Leon	17.8003	~$6,347	~$529
Ten lowest
Sarasota	12.7527	~$4,606	~$384
Bay	12.6966	~$4,567	~$381
Okaloosa	12.2773	~$4,422	~$369
Gulf	12.2198	~$4,400	~$367
Santa Rosa	11.7171	~$4,227	~$352
Sumter	11.2052	~$4,036	~$336
Franklin	10.6003	~$3,806	~$317
Collier	9.8185	~$3,535	~$295
Walton	9.1512	~$3,303	~$275
Monroe	8.2361	~$2,949	~$246

What does this data not tell you?

Forty-seven of Florida’s 67 counties do not appear in either list above, and the figures here do not break down the millage by city, special district, or other sub-county layers.

The millage figures come from the Florida Department of Revenue and represent the total as published for each county. What they do not show: how the total is split among city government, county government, and individual special districts; whether any additional municipal millage applies to a specific address inside the county; or how these rates have moved over time. If your target property sits inside a city limit, your actual bill may differ from the county-level figure shown here. A county with a low published millage can still produce a higher bill at a specific address depending on which local taxing districts apply. Pull the actual tax roll for the parcel before you close.