Rising assessments are repricing the decision to sell.

Your tax bill is quietly changing the math on whether to sell, and in most of the country it is not moving in your favor. Two forces are converging. Assessments are outrunning home values nearly everywhere. And Florida votes this November on a homestead expansion that would pay owners to stay. Both raise the cost of moving, and both hide inside a line item most sellers never model.

Assessments are growing at twice the pace of values

Start with the number sellers ignore. Per ATTOM's 2024 data, the average property tax on a US single-family home was about $4,300, up 5.8 percent year over year, at an effective rate near 0.86 percent. Growth has not slowed. RedTools estimates residential assessments rose roughly 6.2 percent nationally from 2025 to 2026.

Now compare that to prices. Our Home Value Pros data puts the typical US home at about $291,471 as of May 2026, up 3.0 percent year over year across 26,274 ZIP-level markets. Read the two together. Assessed values are climbing at roughly double the pace of actual home values. That gap is the story.

The implication for anyone waiting out the market: your carrying cost is now rising faster than your equity. A home appreciating 3 percent with a tax bill growing 6 percent is a slow leak on the wait-it-out thesis. The leak is small against total price, but it compounds, and in high-rate states like New Jersey, Illinois, and Texas, where effective rates run 2 percent or more, a stale over-assessment can cost thousands a year while you sit.

If you are staying, audit the assessment. When assessed values outrun a cooling market, they are often too high, which is exactly the setup for a successful appeal. If you are selling, stop treating the tax bill as background noise. It is a live argument against waiting another year for marginal appreciation.

Florida's Amendment 3 is an exit tax in disguise

On November 3, 2026, Florida voters decide Amendment 3, the Save Our Homes from Excessive Property Taxes measure. It needs 60 percent to pass. Per the Florida Policy Institute and the Tax Foundation, it would raise the non-school homestead exemption from the current $50,000 to $150,000 in 2027 and $250,000 in 2028, indexed to inflation after that. School taxes, roughly 40 percent of a typical bill per the Tax Foundation, are carved out. The measure also cuts the assessment growth cap on non-homestead property from 10 percent to 5 percent. Florida's Revenue Estimating Conference pegs the recurring cost at about $12 billion.

The headline says tax relief. The read that matters is lock-in. The bigger the exemption, the more valuable it is to already be homesteaded, and the more you forfeit when you sell and rebuy. Florida's Save Our Homes cap already rewards tenure with a low locked-in assessed value. Amendment 3 stacks a far larger exemption on top. The identical house would cost a long-tenured owner materially less to hold than the buyer who takes it fresh. That difference functions as an exit tax on selling.

The calculus splits by position. Long-tenured, homesteaded owners: the code is starting to pay you to stay, and selling resets the advantage. Portability recovers part of your Save Our Homes benefit, but not the value of a $250,000 exemption you would walk away from.

Sellers with an 18-month horizon: watch the buyer pool, not just the price. Under the amendment's residency rules, a buyer who establishes homestead on or after January 1, 2027 is held to roughly the old $50,000 exemption for five years. That builds a hard deadline into the market. Out-of-state buyers who want the full benefit have every incentive to close and establish residency by December 31, 2026. Expect a demand pull-forward into late 2026 and a potential air pocket after. Listing before year end puts your home in front of a motivated, deadline-driven pool that thins out in 2027.

One caveat. As of mid-June 2026, per Barnes Walker, nothing has changed. Florida property taxes are unchanged, the measure is not law, and a 60 percent supermajority is a bar recent Florida amendments have missed. Price your decision on today's rules, not the ballot.

What to do this week

Property taxes are shifting from a fixed cost to a policy variable, and both directions raise the cost of moving. Nationally, 6 percent assessment growth against 3 percent price growth makes waiting quietly more expensive. In Florida, a bigger exemption rewards the owner who stays and penalizes the one who sells and rebuys. Pull your current assessment, compare it to a realistic market value, and file an appeal if it runs hot. If you are a Florida seller, plan your listing around the December 31, 2026 residency clock, because your most motivated buyer may be racing it.