Street Economics

Palm Beach, Florida

HJR 1 Homestead-Exemption Tax-Base Exposure

Palm Beach County . 2025 final assessment roll

Snapshot

The Palm Beach read

Palm Beach fits the Renter-Heavy / Absentee archetype: a majority of the residential housing is not owner-occupied, with 55% or more of units being rentals or second homes, and out-of-state owners hold a larger share than Florida owners do.

Of 8,789 residential housing units, 39.0% are owner-occupied, 32.4% are owned by out-of-state owners, and 28.5% are non-homestead but Florida-owned.

The city ranks 397 of 404 cities by exposure, placing it among the least exposed municipalities in the state.

At full phase-in in 2028, HJR 1 touches only 1.9% of Palm Beach’s non-school taxable base, and just 1.0% at the 2027 step.

Exposure is this low because the amendment only helps homestead owners, and most units here are non-homestead and outside-owned.

The insulation is a symptom, not a strength: residents largely neither own their homes nor are the landlords local.

Notable signal: about 32.4% of the city’s residential units are owned by out-of-state owners.

This is not the same as a high renter share driven by Florida landlords. Here, out-of-state ownership (32.4%) exceeds Florida-owned non-homestead (28.5%), which means the dominant tenure story is absentee ownership, not a locally managed rental market.

Value and income flow generated by housing in Palm Beach are substantially leaving the community.

Land-use composition

Share of taxable value by category, Palm Beach, 2025 roll:

Note: the per-category out-of-state ownership detail (lu_oos) is not available for Palm Beach in this data set. The share-of-value column is shown; the two out-of-state columns are omitted rather than estimated.

What the exposure band means

Band: Very low exposure. The amendment barely registers. Usually because the base is owned by out-of-state owners or commercially deep. The risk here is not the amendment; it is whatever made exposure this low — often that residents do not own their own town.

Looking ahead

Neither of the following changes the exposure figures above; both shape how Palm Beach grows its base after the amendment takes effect.

First, beginning January 1, 2027, the annual assessment-increase cap on non-homestead property drops from 10% to 5%, covering commercial and industrial real property and small residential rentals of nine units or fewer.

Because capped values can rise only 5% per year, the main engine of base growth in these categories becomes transactions: a sale or change of control resets assessed value to market.

Transaction velocity matters more to non-homestead base growth under the new cap than it did before.

Second, new Florida residents who did not maintain a Florida permanent residence as of December 31, 2026 phase into the larger exemption over five years rather than receiving it immediately.

This cannot be read from the roll, so the 1.9% and 1.0% figures above assume full application of the exemption.

Near-term exposure could run slightly lower than modeled in places with many recent arrivals still inside their five-year window.

Where the opportunity is

These recommendations are based solely on the tax roll’s land-use composition. They do not account for whether local land development regulations and zoning permit any of these uses, whether there is local obstruction, or the political dynamics that typically decide what actually gets approved. This is a starting point for a conversation, not a development plan.

• Commercial at 6.0% of total value is the single biggest lever. Palm Beach’s commercial base is thin relative to its overall value, and growing taxable commercial, light-industrial, and employment-generating uses is the most direct way to deepen a base that does not depend on outside-owned rental housing. Existing commercial corridors and any identified commercial core are the logical concentration points for this kind of growth.
• Protecting existing residents from that pressure is a separate and parallel priority from any tax-base strategy.
• Supporting deed-restricted and locally managed rental and missing-middle housing is consistent with the dominant tenure already in place. Non-homestead rental is already the majority tenure in Palm Beach, and locally managed supply keeps more value circulating in the community rather than flowing to out-of-state owners.

Watch-out: do not read low exposure as a fiscal achievement. Heavy renter share plus majority out-of-state ownership of modest-value housing usually signals an affordability and local-wealth problem. Do not confuse this with a second-home resort coast, which is affluent and seasonal rather than working and rented. The distinction matters for what policy response is appropriate.

Source and scope

All figures are drawn from the Florida Department of Revenue 2025 final assessment roll, the most recent certified roll in the state’s possession. The roll is used here as a structural proxy for tax-base composition, not as a dollar forecast for any specific budget year.

HJR 1 / CS-HJR 1F is on the November 2026 ballot; the 2026 roll is the assessment roll in place when voters decide. If the amendment passes, the first roll affected is the 2027 roll at the $150,000 step, followed by the 2028 roll at the full $250,000 phase-in. When the 2026 and later rolls are certified, the analysis re-runs on the new data.

Ownership shares are measured on a residential-unit basis. The out-of-state figure is a mailing-address proxy: it counts units whose owner’s mailing-address state in the roll is a non-Florida state or country. It undercounts true outside ownership because out-of-state owners using in-state mailing addresses or in-state LLCs count as Florida-owned. It does not prove where an owner lives.

This read is a land-use-composition starting point, not a full fiscal, economic, or legal analysis.