Refinancing a mortgage in Florida

Replacing a mortgage is a quieter transaction than buying a house. Nobody moves and no deed is signed. The old note is paid off, a new one is signed, and a new mortgage securing it goes on record. In most states that last step is clerical work with a fee attached. Florida taxes the instrument itself, and taxes it on how much the instrument is for.

Most of what a Florida refinance asks of you is not a Florida question at all. The credit record, the income documents, the equity a lender wants to see behind the new loan and the waiting periods that apply before one can be written are set by the program the file is put into, and they read the same in Tallahassee as they do anywhere else. Those are laid out in what lenders look for on a refinance, and the order of events is in the refinance guide. Three things here are genuinely local, and they are what the rest of this page is for: what the state charges on the new note, what happens to the property tax break you already hold, and what a condominium file waits on that a house does not.

What the state levies on the new note

Two charges attach to the paperwork a refinance creates rather than to a sale. The documentary stamp tax on a mortgage is levied per dollar of the debt secured, at 0.35% (s. 201.08(1)(b), Fla. Stat.; Miami-Dade Clerk of the Courts, Official Records, read 25 August 2026). Beside it sits a separate non-recurring intangible tax on the note, levied on the amount that note secures against Florida real property, at 0.2% (s. 199.133(1), Fla. Stat.; Miami-Dade Clerk of the Courts, Official Records, read 25 August 2026). Both attach to the mortgage going on record, so a mortgage replacing an earlier one is charged the way the earlier one was. Neither is a filing fee, and neither is waived because the borrower has not changed.

The filing fee is separate, and it genuinely is flat: $10 (s. 28.24(13), Fla. Stat.; Miami-Dade Clerk of the Courts, Official Records, read 25 August 2026) for the first page of an instrument in the Official Records, a statutory ceiling clerks may not exceed. It is the only one of the three that does not care how large the loan is.

The charge everyone has heard of is the one this transaction does not owe

The Florida figure that circulates most widely is the deed tax, at 0.7% (Florida Department of Revenue, Florida Documentary Stamp Tax; s. 201.02(1)(a), Fla. Stat., read 25 August 2026) of the consideration. It falls on a document conveying the property, and a refinance conveys nothing, so it has no part in this. A Florida closing involves three distinct state charges, one on the deed, one on the recorded mortgage and one on the note (Florida Department of Revenue, Florida Documentary Stamp Tax; ss. 201.02, 201.031, 201.08, 199.133 and 28.24(13), Fla. Stat., read 25 August 2026) and only two of them belong to somebody replacing a note. Mistaking the deed figure for the mortgage stamp doubles that line on its own, before the note tax beside it is counted at all.

Why the size of the note matters more here than elsewhere

Because the two note charges are struck per dollar rather than per document, what they come to is a function of the loan and of nothing else. Weighing a Florida refinance against one in a flat-fee state is not comparing two versions of the same line: one grows with the balance, the other stops growing at the counter. For a conforming loan the outer marker in nearly every Florida county is the one-unit baseline limit, $832,750 (Federal Housing Finance Agency, Full County Loan Limit List 2026 (HERA-based, final, flat file), read 25 August 2026), and the charges above are struck on whatever the note actually is.

What no longer puts a clock on doing it

Some states restrict how soon a home loan may be refinanced again, or require a demonstrable benefit to the borrower first. That is a fair thing to ask and a bad thing to guess at, so here is the position with the source that establishes it: None in force. Florida once had one: the Florida Fair Lending Act at ss. 494.0078 to 494.00797 restricted refinancing a high-cost home loan without benefit to the borrower. It is no longer in the statutes. Chapter 494 in the 2026 Florida Statutes has three parts and ends at s. 494.0077, and s. 494.0079 returns nothing. (Chapter 494, Fla. Stat., full chapter index, confirmed on the Legislature's site and the Florida Senate mirror, read 25 August 2026)

Two cautions belong beside it. The absence of a state rule is not the absence of any rule: federal law and a lender's own overlays both survive it, and neither is a Florida question. And the session law that removed the old chapter was never identified, so what is sourced above is how the chapter reads today, not a history of how it got there.

The tax on the house is a different question from the tax on the note

A new loan means a new escrow analysis, and the Florida property tax side of it is levied as millage against taxable value. Across all sixty-seven counties, weighted by the taxable base each one holds, that comes to 1.64% (Florida Department of Revenue, Property Tax Oversight, 2025 Data Book: Millage and Taxes Levied Report and Taxable Value Report, read 25 August 2026). Read it as the shape of the thing rather than as a bill: the Department publishes a total for each county and no statewide row at all, so any statewide Florida figure seen elsewhere is somebody else's arithmetic on a basis they usually do not state.

Refinancing does not restart the homestead exemption or the Save Our Homes cap

This is the question Florida homeowners ask most often about a refinance, and the answer turns on what the break is attached to. It is attached to the person and the property, never to the loan. The homestead exemption takes up to $50,000 off assessed value, in two tranches, the upper of which the statute has indexed to inflation each 1 January since voters approved Amendment 5 in November 2024, although the Department still publishes the unindexed figure (Florida Department of Revenue, Property Tax Information for Homestead Exemption (PT-113, R. 08/25); s. 196.031, Fla. Stat., read 25 August 2026). Once it has run for a full year, the constitutional cap holds the annual growth in that assessed value to 3% (Fla. Const. Art. VII s. 4(d)(1); s. 193.155(1), Fla. Stat.; Florida Department of Revenue guide PT-112, read 25 August 2026), or to the change in the price index where that is lower. Over a long tenure the cap is worth far more than the exemption is.

What ends both is a change of ownership, and the Department of Revenue says so in the guide it writes for buyers: on a change of ownership the property appraiser must remove the exemptions and reassess at just value, taking effect on the 1 January after the purchase (Florida Department of Revenue, Property Tax Information for First-Time Florida Homebuyers (PT-107); Fla. Const. Art. VII s. 4(d)(3); s. 193.155(3)(a), Fla. Stat., read 25 August 2026). Replacing a note does not convey the property and does not move a name on or off the deed, so a refinance on its own leaves that trigger unpulled and the cap keeps running from where it was.

The version worth stopping for is the refinance that does move title: taking a former spouse off the deed, adding an adult child, putting the house into a trust. The lender may be indifferent to which of those you do and the property appraiser is not, so that is a call to the county office before the closing is scheduled rather than after. The exemption itself is claimed on the county's own form, and the deadline is March 1 of the tax year. The applicant must hold title and occupy the home as a permanent residence on 1 January of that year, and files Form DR-501 with the county property appraiser. (Florida Department of Revenue, Property Tax Information for Homestead Exemption (PT-113, R. 08/25); s. 196.011, Fla. Stat., read 25 August 2026).

A Florida condominium refinance waits on the association

A house is refinanced on your paperwork. A condominium unit is refinanced on yours and on the building's, and Florida has put more into the second folder than most states have. Florida puts two structural obligations on condominium buildings of three habitable stories or more, and both feed straight into a buyer's carrying cost. A milestone inspection by a licensed engineer or architect is required by 31 December of the year the building turns 30, and every ten years after, with local authorities able to move that to 25 years for buildings near salt water. Separately, a structural integrity reserve study must be completed at least every ten years, covering roof, structure, fireproofing, plumbing, electrical, waterproofing and exterior painting, and windows and exterior doors. For budgets adopted on or after 31 December 2024, unit owners can no longer vote to waive or underfund the reserves that study identifies. (s. 553.899 and s. 718.112(2)(f) and (g), Fla. Stat., read 25 August 2026)

Both obligations sit on the association rather than on the unit owner, which is exactly why they are easy to be surprised by, and both reach the unit owner anyway, as assessments and as documents somebody else has to produce. The practical consequence for a refinance is one of sequence: ask the association where the milestone inspection and the reserve study stand before the application goes in, because on a condominium file the slowest item is usually not one you can hurry along.

Who supervises the person who writes the loan

Mortgage origination in the state is licensed and supervised by the Office of Financial Regulation, an office of the Financial Services Commission (s. 494.001(29) and s. 494.0025(1)-(3), Fla. Stat.; s. 20.121(3)(a)2, Fla. Stat., read 25 August 2026). That is where a licence is checked and where a complaint is filed. BEDRWay is not a lender, a broker or a servicer and originates nothing anywhere; a request that arrives here reaches a licensed mortgage professional working in your state, and that person is the only one who can discuss terms with you.

What this page will not tell you

It will not tell you whether to do this. That turns on the note you already hold, on what a lender is willing to write, and on how long you expect to keep the house, and none of those live in a state fact file. Nothing above is a price, a payment, or a promise about how long anything takes.

The arithmetic is yours to run on numbers you supply, and two tools take them without supplying any of their own: how many months it takes to recover what you spend, and the loan you hold set against a new one. Both of the note charges above belong in the costs you enter, because in Florida they are struck on the loan amount rather than fixed at the counter.

One gap is worth naming rather than hiding, because on a Florida refinance it is the largest thing in the escrow line: this page carries no insurance figure. Nothing here prices homeowners or dwelling coverage on a basis that would survive comparison against another state, and the coastal and inland bands that float around carry no publisher.