Renting out a room in your home? You may lose full homestead exemption

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With Florida’s rising cost of living, many might think about renting out a portion of their home. If you do, you cannot claim a full homestead exemption.

Homestead exemption lets you receive up to 50,000 dollars off of the assessed value of your home. You’re also covered by the “save our homes cap”. It says that in any given year, your taxable value can’t rise above a certain amount.

In April, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that anyone who rents out part of their home could not claim full homestead tax exemption.

Bob Henriquez is a Hillsborough County Property Appraiser.

“A lot of folks are doing this kind of quietly, thinking that they’re not going to, somebody’s not going to find out about it. But generally what happens is you have a large home, you rent out a couple rooms, and the next thing you know, there’s more and more cars parking there, or whatever may, and then the next door neighbor gets nosey about it and calls us, and we have to take look into those things.”

He encourages people who may consider becoming landlords to make sure they’re doing it legally.

“Reach out to us here at the property appraiser’s office, and talk to our exemptions department, and make their not running afoul of the law.”