Fort Lauderdale (ICW), FL: Property Tax Guide

Broward's Combined Millage: Roughly 19-21 Mills, But Verify Before Relying On It

A realtor-published compilation puts the combined Broward County/City of Fort Lauderdale millage at roughly 19-21 mills total -- meaning roughly $19 to $21 of tax per $1,000 of taxable value -- broken out as approximately: Broward County's general fund at ~5.66 mills, the Broward County School Board at ~6.68 mills, the City of Fort Lauderdale's own operating millage at ~4.49 mills, plus assorted special districts and authorities adding roughly another 2-3 mills on top.

That breakdown is important to use with a caveat: it comes from a secondary, realtor-published source, not a primary Broward County Property Appraiser table or an official Truth-in-Millage (TRIM) notice. Treat each individual mill figure above as directional and current-year-approximate rather than exact, and reconfirm the actual current millage against the Broward County Property Appraiser's own materials at broward.org, or your TRIM notice, before budgeting a specific purchase around it.

A Rate Cut Doesn't Automatically Mean a Lower Bill

Broward's FY2025-26 budget cycle produced what county officials described as a "modest" millage-rate decrease. That sounds like good news for owners, but WLRN reporting from September 2025 flagged that many owners' actual tax bills were still set to rise regardless -- because a lower rate applied against a higher assessed value can still produce a bigger bill. That dynamic matters most for non-homesteaded and newly purchased canal-front property, where assessed values can climb toward full market value each year without a Save Our Homes cap to slow them down.

The exact percentage of that FY2025-26 rate cut wasn't independently confirmed in the research behind this page, so it's stated here qualitatively rather than as a specific number. The takeaway for a buyer: don't assume a reported rate decrease means your bill will fall -- check the actual assessed value and bill for a specific parcel directly with Broward County.

Florida's Homestead Exemption: The Same $50,000 Break, in Two Pieces

If a Fort Lauderdale ICW property will be your permanent, primary residence, Florida's homestead exemption works exactly as it does everywhere else in the state, including this site's other Florida markets. It's worth up to $50,000 total, split into two pieces: the first $25,000 applies to all levies, including school taxes, while a second $25,000 applies only to non-school levies, and only against the portion of assessed value between $50,000 and $75,000. In practice, the full $50,000 benefit only reaches its maximum value against the school-tax portion of a bill for a property assessed above $75,000.

Florida requires homestead exemption applications by March 1 of the tax year for which the exemption is sought; missing that date generally means waiting until the following year.

Save Our Homes: The Assessment Cap, Confirmed to Apply the Same Way in Broward

Once a property carries an active homestead exemption, Florida's Save Our Homes constitutional amendment caps how much its assessed value can rise each year going forward, limiting increases to whichever is lower: 3%, or the change in the Consumer Price Index. This is the identical statewide mechanic already documented for this site's other Florida markets, and it applies the same way in Broward County -- there is no separate, weaker, or stronger local version of Save Our Homes here.

The cap protects assessed value, not market value, so a homesteaded owner's tax bill can end up meaningfully lower than a comparable non-homesteaded neighbor's after several years of appreciation in a market where canal-front values have been rising quickly. The benefit is also portable: a homeowner moving from one Florida homestead to another can carry a portion of their accumulated Save Our Homes benefit to the new property rather than starting over at full assessed value. As with the homestead exemption itself, Save Our Homes only attaches to a permanent, primary residence -- it does not apply to second homes, vacation rentals, or investment property.

Non-Homestead Property and the Canal-Front Assessment Premium

A meaningful share of Fort Lauderdale ICW canal-front inventory is bought as a second home, vacation property, or investment rather than a primary residence -- and neither the homestead exemption nor Save Our Homes applies in that case. Non-homestead property in Florida is instead subject to a separate, less generous 10% annual cap on assessed-value increases, applied automatically without an application, and that cap resets toward full market value whenever the property changes ownership.

That matters more here than in a typical Florida market because canal-front and ICW-adjacent homes are a distinctly higher-value segment. Per a waterfront-market report published February 2026, Fort Lauderdale waterfront single-family homes carried a full-year 2025 median sale price of $2,300,000, with price per square foot up 9.2% year over year and the full-year median itself up 17.9% year over year. Those are waterfront/canal-segment figures, not a whole-city median -- no general citywide median-home-price figure was confirmed for comparison -- but the direction is clear: assessed values on canal-front, dockage-equipped property are climbing quickly, and a non-homesteaded owner's taxable value can follow that climb close to market pace. Budget for the tax line on a canal-front purchase accordingly, rather than assuming it will track a generic city or county average.

What This Page Does Not State, and Why

This page deliberately does not state an exact current-year millage total, an exact FY2025-26 rate-cut percentage, or a specific dollar tax bill for a given assessed value, because none of those figures were confirmed against a primary Broward County Property Appraiser or TRIM document in the research behind this page. The 5.66 / 6.68 / 4.49-mill breakdown above is a secondary, realtor-published compilation, offered as directional context, not a substitute for your own parcel's actual TRIM notice or a call to the Property Appraiser's office.