Jacksonville homeowners have watched their property tax bills climb far faster than the value of their homes, and new numbers show just how stark that gap has become. A national analysis of the 100 largest U.S. metro areas found Jacksonville ranked No. 2 for the widening distance between rising tax bills and slower-growing home values between 2022 and 2024.
According to ConsumerAffairs, the typical Jacksonville-area property tax bill rose 21.7% between 2022 and 2024, while median home values in the metro increased just 8.1% over that same stretch. That left a 13.6-percentage-point gap between how fast taxes grew and how fast home values grew — one of the widest margins in the country. The analysis was built on U.S. Census Bureau data covering the most recent comparable two-year period available when the report was published.
Jacksonville's situation wasn't unique, but it was close to the worst in the nation. The only metro with a larger gap was Lakeland-Winter Haven, where property taxes jumped 28.1% while home values grew 14.2%, producing a 13.9-percentage-point spread that placed it first nationally, per WFTV. Two other Florida metros also cracked the top tier: Palm Bay came in at No. 6 and Cape Coral at No. 11, according to ClickOrlando.
A Longer Pattern Behind the Numbers
The imbalance isn't new to the past two years. Jacksonville-area home values climbed by double digits in 2021 and 2022 before growth slowed sharply in 2023, as mortgage rates rose to around 7% for a 30-year loan, the ConsumerAffairs report notes. Zoomed out over a longer window, from 2019 to 2024, home values in the Jacksonville area actually rose 63.1%, well ahead of the 44.9% rise in property taxes over that same five-year span — showing the tax-versus-value gap has been more pronounced specifically in the most recent two-year period measured.
Nationally, the trend ran in the opposite direction. Home values rose 12.4% across the country from 2022 to 2024, outpacing the 10.6% increase in property taxes, per the ConsumerAffairs analysis. Jacksonville was among 46 of the 100 largest metros where property taxes grew faster than home values during that window — a pattern researchers say could be partly shaped by changes to Census metro-area boundaries, which they cautioned may affect some comparisons. The findings compare metro-wide medians rather than tracking individual homeowners' bills or shifts in local tax rates, WFTV reported.
A Ballot Measure Could Reshape the Math
Florida voters will weigh in on a potential fix next week. Amendment 3 goes before the electorate in the Nov. 3 general election, and it would raise the state's homestead exemption for non-school property taxes from $25,000 to $150,000 in 2027 and to $250,000 in 2028, according to ClickOrlando's report, which cited the Florida Department of State. The measure would also provide inflation adjustments to that exemption after 2028.
The amendment additionally proposes cutting the annual assessment-growth cap for non-homesteaded properties from 10% to 5%, a change aimed at slowing how quickly taxable values — and the bills tied to them — can rise year over year. But the measure faces a high bar: it needs at least 60% voter approval to pass, per the same Florida Department of State figures relayed by ClickOrlando.
Whether the amendment clears that threshold remains to be seen, but for now, the data captured by News4JAX and the underlying ConsumerAffairs study underscore a pattern many Jacksonville homeowners have likely already felt in their mailboxes: a tax bill rising nearly three times faster than the value of the home it's attached to.
