How to Appeal Property Taxes in Miami-Dade, and When Not To Bother

Sometime in the next few weeks the Property Appraiser will mail you a TRIM notice, and the top of it will say DO NOT PAY in capital letters. It is not a bill. It is the county telling you what it thinks your house is worth and what your taxes will look like if every taxing authority adopts the rate it has proposed.

If you disagree with the value, you have 25 days from the mailing to file an appeal with the Value Adjustment Board. Notices go out on or before August 24, 2026, which puts the deadline at September 18, 2026. Filing costs $15 per folio.

Deciding whether to file is harder, and for most people who have owned a homesteaded house for a while, the honest answer is no. This walks through how to read the notice, how to tell which situation you are in, and what an appeal is worth once you price in the fees.

Who sets your value and who sets your rate

Three different offices touch your tax bill and they do different jobs. The Property Appraiser decides what your property is worth as of January 1. The taxing authorities listed on your notice, the county, the school board, your city, set their millage rates in September. The Tax Collector sends the bill and takes the money.

An appeal only reaches the first of those. You can challenge the value. You cannot challenge the millage rate, the exemption amounts set by statute, the non-ad valorem assessments, or the Save Our Homes cap percentage, no matter how unreasonable any of them feel (F.S. 194.301).

The board itself is independent of the Property Appraiser's office, and the Clerk of the Court and Comptroller runs it, according to the Clerk of the Value Adjustment Board. Rates differ a lot between Coral Gables, Coconut Grove, Pinecrest, South Miami, Palmetto Bay and unincorporated Miami-Dade, which I break down in the combined millage rate for your area.

How to read your Miami-Dade TRIM notice

Market value, assessed value, taxable value

Market value is what the Property Appraiser thinks the property would have sold for on January 1, 2026. Assessed value is that number after the cap is applied, either Save Our Homes on a homestead or the 10% cap on everything else. Taxable value is what is left after your exemptions come off, and that is the number the millage rate gets multiplied against.

The notice has to show all of those for both this year and last year (F.S. 200.069(6)(a)). You will see two assessed values rather than one, because school taxes and everything else use different exemptions. I cover that split in detail in how the homestead exemption and Save Our Homes work.

The three tax columns, and the one people misread

Across the middle of the notice are three dollar columns, labeled Column 1, Column 2 and Column 3 on the totals row (F.S. 200.069(5)).

Column 1 is what you actually paid last year. Column 3 is what you will pay if every authority adopts the rate it is proposing. Those two are straightforward.

Column 2 is the one people get wrong. It is headed "Your Taxes This Year IF NO Budget Change Is Adopted," which sounds like last year's tax bill repeated. It is not. Column 2 takes this year's value and applies the rolled-back rate, meaning the rate that would collect the same total revenue from the same properties as last year (F.S. 200.069(2)(b) and F.S. 200.065(1)).

That distinction is useful. If Column 2 is higher than Column 1, your property gained value faster than the rest of the jurisdiction did. Your value going up on its own does not do that. And comparing Column 2 to Column 3 shows you exactly how much of the increase is a rate decision, which is what the September hearings are for. The date, time and location of every one of those hearings is printed in the last column of your notice.

When an appeal is not worth filing

A long-held homestead usually has nothing to gain

On a homesteaded property, your assessed value is whichever is lower: the market value, or last year's assessed value plus the cap. The 2026 cap is 2.7%, according to the Florida Department of Revenue (F.S. 193.155(1) and (2)).

Round numbers make the problem obvious. Say your notice shows a market value of $1,077,000 and an assessed value of $513,500. You are taxed on the assessed number. To move your bill by even a dollar, you would have to prove the property is worth less than $513,500, which is a 52.3% cut to the county's opinion of value.

That is not a winnable argument. And you are not being overtaxed: Save Our Homes has already knocked more off your bill than any appeal realistically could, and it did it for free. For scale, the average successful residential appeal in tax year 2024 reduced county taxable value by $90,386, according to the county's Tax Impact of the Value Adjustment Board notice.

Your neighbor's assessment is not evidence

The Miami-Dade Property Appraiser prints this as a heading on its own website: "Comparable assessments are not a basis to reduce the value of a property."

Two identical houses on the same block routinely carry very different assessed values, because the owners bought in different years and have accumulated different amounts of Save Our Homes protection. That is the system working as designed. Comparable sales are evidence. Comparable assessments are worth nothing at a hearing.

The county starts out presumed right

The law assumes the Property Appraiser got it correct, as long as the office can show it followed the statutory valuation factors and standard appraisal practice (F.S. 194.301(1), Rule 12D-9.027(2)(a)). Once that is established, the burden is on you, and you have to outweigh the county's evidence to win (F.S. 194.301(2)). You are not walking in on even footing.

When a Miami-Dade appeal is worth filing

Two things have to be true. First, the January 1, 2026 value has to be higher than what comparable sales support. Second, the gap between market value and assessed value has to be small enough that cutting the market value reaches your taxable value. If either one fails, your $15 buys you nothing.

Both tests come down to comparable sales as of January 1, 2026. If you want that set pulled for your folio before you spend the $15, get in touch and I will run it, classified by location the same way I build my quarterly market numbers.

You bought recently and the value came in high

When a property changes hands, the assessment resets to full just value on the following January 1 (F.S. 193.155(3)). That reset is the statute working as written and there is no appealing it.

What you can check is the number itself. If the January 1, 2026 value is higher than what you paid in an arm's length sale, your own closing statement is about the strongest evidence there is. The law defines value as what a willing buyer would pay a willing seller, and it specifically measures value net of the reasonable costs of sale (F.S. 193.011(1) and factor 8).

Rentals and second homes, where the cap did nothing

Second homes, rentals and investment property get a 10% annual cap instead of Save Our Homes, and assessed value can never exceed just value (F.S. 193.1554(3) and (4)).

In practice that cap often does nothing at all. Take a parcel where last year's assessed and just values were both $800,000. If market value rises 8%, a round number used only to show the arithmetic, the cap would allow $880,000 but just value is only $864,000. The lower number wins, so the cap never came into play.

That is exactly the situation where an appeal pays. When assessed value and just value are the same number, every dollar you knock off the value is a dollar off what you are taxed on. This group has more to gain than anyone.

What a $1,000,000 purchase looks like in year one

Buyers ask me to run this constantly, so here it is with round numbers.

Pay $1,000,000 and just value typically lands near 85% of the price, or $850,000, because Florida measures value net of the reasonable costs of sale. Claim homestead and the 2026 exemption of $51,411 brings your non-school taxable value down to $798,589. School taxable value stays higher, at $825,000, because only the first $25,000 of that exemption applies to school taxes.

Unincorporated Miami-Dade charges 10.2987 mills for non-school and 6.6330 mills for schools in 2025-26. That works out to $8,224 plus $5,472, so roughly $13,700 in your first year. The millage guide runs the same math across all eight neighborhoods I cover.

The Miami-Dade property tax appeal success rate

About a third of residential appeals succeed

In tax year 2024, Miami-Dade owners asked for 41,942 residential assessment reductions and the board granted 14,856 of them. That is a 35.4% success rate, according to the county's Tax Impact of the Value Adjustment Board notice. Across all property types the rate was better, 44.2%. Residential is the harder track.

Two things make that headline number softer than it looks, in opposite directions.

It probably understates your odds. Another 15,887 residential petitions were withdrawn or settled before the board ever ruled, and the county reports those as a single combined figure. Some meaningful share of them were owners who got what they wanted without a hearing, but there is no way to tell how many.

It also is not a pure value-challenge rate, because portability transfer petitions are counted in the same pool. Exemption appeals run a much narrower track: 818 residential requests, 160 granted. Tax year 2024 is the most recent year the county has published.

The arithmetic on a contingency fee

Appeal firms advertise heavily in August, so it helps to know what their cut costs you.

Start with what a typical win is worth. Board actions in tax year 2024 cut a combined $1,342,779,167 in residential county taxable value across 14,856 parcels, which averages out to $90,386 per parcel. At the unincorporated Miami-Dade rate of 16.9317 mills, that is about $1,530 of first-year tax savings on an average successful appeal.

Miami-Dade appeal firms publish contingency rates of 25% to 35% of your first-year savings, plus $25 to $125 up front. I checked four firms' published fee schedules in August 2026. One of the four does not publish a percentage at all, and quotes the county filing fee at $25 to $50 per folio when the Clerk actually charges $15.

An average win leaves you this much after fees. Every route below includes the county's $15, which is owed no matter who files.

Total cost and what the homeowner keeps by filing route, on the average successful residential reduction. Bar length is proportional to what the homeowner keeps.

How you file	What it costs you	What you keep
File it yourself on the DR-486	$15.00	$1,515.39
25% contingency plus $25 up front	$422.60	$1,107.79
35% contingency plus $45 up front	$595.64	$934.75
33% contingency plus $125 up front	$645.03	$885.36

Based on the average successful residential reduction, a first-year saving of $1,530.39 at the unincorporated Miami-Dade rate of 16.9317 mills. These are derived averages rather than published figures.

That assumes you win. Weight each route by the 35.4% success rate and you get what the decision is worth before you know the outcome.

Expected first-year value by filing route, weighted by the tax year 2024 residential success rate of 35.4 percent. Bar length is proportional to expected value.

How you file	What it is worth before you know if you win
File it yourself, $15	$526.76
25% plus $25 up front	$366.32
35% plus $45 up front	$292.14
33% plus $125 up front	$222.98

Filing it yourself leaves you with nearly twice what the most expensive contingency route does. But the break-even matters more than the averages.

Take the most expensive route, the 33% contingency with $125 up front. Once the county fee is added you are out $140 before anything happens. It earns you nothing at all until your tax saving passes $590, which takes a taxable value reduction of about $34,862. Below that you have paid to lose money, because the up-front portion is gone whether you win or not.

These are countywide residential averages, and averages hide the cases that matter most. A high-value property with a genuine overassessment can save many times $1,530, and paying someone a share of that is perfectly rational. And none of the four firms publishes its own success rate.

Ask the Property Appraiser for an informal review

Before you file anything, you can just call and ask. This is a statutory right rather than a favor. The Property Appraiser or a staff member "shall confer with the taxpayer regarding the correctness of the assessment" (F.S. 194.011(2)).

Miami-Dade handles it through an Informal Assessment Review Form, which asks for your opinion of market value as of January 1 and comparable sales with address, price, date and folio number. The office promises a status update within five business days.

One warning, and it is the reason people miss the deadline. The informal review does not pause anything. As the state's own form puts it, the conference "is not required and does not change your filing due date," and the county's review form carries no warning that the clock is still running. If your numbers suggest a real case, request the review and file the $15 petition anyway. You can withdraw a petition later at no cost. You cannot revive a missed deadline.

How to appeal your Miami-Dade property taxes, step by step

Filing the petition

Deadline, form, fee and filing locations for a 2026 Miami-Dade Value Adjustment Board petition

Item	Detail
Deadline	September 18, 2026. Florida law sets the window at 25 days from the mailing of the notice (F.S. 194.011(3)(d))
Form	Florida DOR form DR-486, revision R. 12/25. Use the DR-486PORT if you are appealing a denied portability transfer
Fee	$15 per folio, nonrefundable. It drops to $5 per folio on joint petitions, which condominium, cooperative and homeowners' associations can file, as can owners of adjoining undeveloped parcels (F.S. 194.011(3)(e) and (f))
File online	vabprod.miamidade.gov
File by mail or in person	Clerk of the Value Adjustment Board, Stephen P. Clark Center, 111 NW First Street, Suite 1720, Miami, FL 33128

One petition covers one issue. If you are disputing two things, the DR-486 tells you to file separately for each. And an exemption denial runs on its own clock, 30 days from the date that denial was mailed rather than from the TRIM date (F.S. 194.011(3)(d)).

The two evidence deadlines

Your evidence is due twice, to two different offices. A list and summary of it, with copies, goes to the Property Appraiser at least 15 calendar days before your hearing. The same evidence goes to the Clerk's AXIA system by 9:00 a.m. the day before.

One thing changed recently and it works in your favor. As of September 1, 2025, the exchange is mandatory and runs both ways, so the Property Appraiser now has to hand over its evidence to you without any preconditions (Chapter 2025-208, Laws of Florida). Tax year 2026 is the first full cycle under that rule, which means a homeowner filing alone gets to see the county's file 15 days before the hearing without having to ask. The DR-486 also has a checkbox letting the board consider your evidence if you would rather not attend.

The payment rule that quietly kills petitions

This one catches people. If your appeal is still pending when taxes go delinquent, you have to have paid at least 75% of the ad valorem taxes plus all of the non-ad valorem assessments, less discounts (F.S. 194.014). For tax year 2026 that means paying by March 31, 2027.

The statute leaves no room: the board "must deny the petition by written decision by April 20 if the petitioner fails to make the payment required by this subsection." A special magistrate's recommendation does not count as a final decision and does not get you out of it. Most owners pay in full in November and never come near this, but if you are holding payment while you appeal, mark the date.

What an appeal does not do

A win resolves one tax year and nothing beyond it. The Property Appraiser reassesses market value every January 1, and nothing binds the office to a value the board set last year.

What does carry forward is the arithmetic. If you get the assessed value reduced, next year's cap is calculated off that lower number, so the saving compounds quietly. If you only get market value reduced on a property whose assessed value already sits far below it, nothing carries at all.

An appeal also does not touch your Save Our Homes benefit, which is just the difference between market value and your capped assessed value. Cut the market value and that reported benefit shrinks without your tax bill moving a dollar. It does not change portability or the DR-501T either.

And it does nothing for a buyer. When a property sells, the assessment resets to just value the following January 1 regardless of anything the board decided (F.S. 193.155(3) and F.S. 193.1554(5)). A seller cannot market a low tax bill, and a seller's appeal in the year of the sale is worth close to nothing to whoever buys it.

The one line on your TRIM notice to check first

Find market value and assessed value and look at the distance between them. That gap tells most owners everything they need to know.

A wide gap means Save Our Homes has already saved you more than a petition ever could, and you can put the notice down. A narrow gap means a reduction would reach your taxable value and it is worth pulling comparable sales. On most non-homesteaded property that gap is zero or close to it, which is why those owners have the real cases.

Either way, the date is September 18, 2026.

If you want a second opinion, I will pull the polygon-classified comparable set for your folio and tell you straight whether the case is there. Call me at 786.223.1117.