Real estate industry dumps on DeSantis’s extraordinary push to end property taxes

While most Floridians are thrilled at the prospect of Gov. Ron DeSantis eliminating property taxes, some real estate experts are saying, “Not so fast.”

“Money does need to be replaced somehow, somewhere by someone,” Continuum Company president Phil Gutman warned Fox News.

The reason is that the revenue from taxes pays for essential city services like police, fire departments, road maintenance, park maintenance, public schools, etc.

“At the end of the day, you cannot simply lower property taxes or eliminate property taxes without replacing at least a significant majority of that revenue through alternative means,” Budge Huskey, the president and CEO of Premier Sotheby’s International Realty, explained.

“Who’s gonna build the roads? Who’s gonna fund the [police]? Who’s going to fund education? Who’s to do all the things that need to be done to have a productive society? It gets back to the fact that everybody wants lower taxes, but it must be strategic,” he added.

Ron DeSantis on ending property taxes statewide:

“You buy a home, you buy land… and then, you’ve been taxed many times [on that]… is it your property, or not? Just for being on your property, you’ve got to write a check to the government every year?” pic.twitter.com/ZgZKRfJ9rJ

— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) March 3, 2025

According to the Florida Policy Institute, property tax collection in the state of Florida generates $55 billion in revenue annually.

This accounts for “18% of county revenues, 17% of municipal revenues, and up to 60% of public education funds,” Fox Business notes.

The Florida Policy Institute has further estimated that the state’s sales tax would need to be spiked by up to six percent just to make up for all the revenue that would be lost without property taxes.

“When you look at the amount of revenue that is collected in property taxes within this state and the implications, if the math is wrong on any of this, especially in the absence of clarity as to alternative funding, to suggest that an investment of $1,000,000, which is a pittance compared to what we are looking at shifting in terms of revenues, it makes no financial or business sense to me,” Huskey said.

One idea DeSantis has proposed to make up for the lost revenue calls for instituting a new “entry tax” for newcomers to Florida:

MUST-SEE: Ron DeSantis burns Zohran Mamdani over his “radical-left” agenda.

“This guy makes de Blasio look like Ronald Reagan.”

“This guys policies… are probably the most radical-left that I’ve ever seen.”

“I think that I’m gonna have to charge an ‘entry tax’ or something,… pic.twitter.com/o89pdiMurM

— Resist the Mainstream (@ResisttheMS) July 2, 2025

Both Gutman and Huskey seemed okay with the idea.

“For the real estate world, it doesn’t benefit or negatively affect us in any way,” Gutman said. “Obviously, it depends on how much that entry tax would be. At some point, you have to be okay with paying some sort of fee and entry tax or whatever it takes to get here.”

“From the standpoint of real estate sales in general, it would be very much a positive,” Huskey added.

But he warned that incoming traffic to Florida may not be high enough for the plan to work.

“However, I do think that in order to try to offset any kind of entry tax, [it] would have to be almost at an exorbitant level based upon the current migration that we have,” he said. “We are not experiencing the same levels of migration that we had during COVID by any stretch of the imagination.”

As for the idea of abolishing property taxes itself, Gutman argued that it’ll ultimately benefit “a lot of people,” including admittedly some who don’t necessarily need the help.

“When you pass a law like that and eliminate property taxes, it’s obviously gonna benefit a lot of people that really didn’t need that benefit to begin with, right?”  he said.

“But that’s just a really small percentage of the people that will be positively impacted… Something like this is a really broad stroke that will be across the entire state. And, ultimately, I do think that there’s a lot of people who are in need of it,” he added.

Huskey, meanwhile, wants to see the numbers laid out first.

“I am very much in favor of overall studies to examine what is the best methodology for raising revenues in the state and whether that involves a reduction in property taxes as part of the mix,” he said.

“At the end of the day, I’m a business person. I run a large business. I know the numbers. And I want to have somebody show me the numbers rather than legislating in the absence of clarity,” he concluded.

Senior Staff Writer
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V. Saxena is a staff writer for BizPac Review with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University.

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