The property tax line on an Alpharetta listing sheet usually shows what the current owner pays, not what the next owner will. That gap can run into the thousands. How long the seller has owned the home can affect the buyer's starting point, but the school district, local tax rates, and the buyer's own exemption eligibility also matter.
PropertyTaxRates.org explains that Georgia taxes homes on 40 percent of fair market value. Alpharetta homeowners may qualify for city, county, and state tax relief on top of that base number: floating exemptions can slow how fast taxable value climbs, while other exemptions and credits reduce the amount subject to tax. According to Fulton County's assessor, homestead exemptions are tied to the person who files, not the house, so a new owner has to file for their own after the deed changes hands.
The Cap Follows the Filing, Not the Address
According to Appen Media, Alpharetta has run its own floating homestead exemption since 2018, well before the state got involved. The city's finance director has described it as tracking the gap between a home's current assessed value and an adjusted base value, and the practical effect is that a homeowner's taxable value can grow by no more than the lesser of 3 percent or the Consumer Price Index each year, no matter how fast the actual market moves.
That sounds like a simple speed limit on tax growth, and for the person who filed it, it is. But the exemption doesn't move with the property. Fulton County's own assessor's office is direct about this: if the deed changes, the exemption comes off, and the new owner has to file again from scratch. The homestead application deadline applies to the current tax year, with a second chance built into the 45-day window after a homeowner receives their annual assessment notice, according to PropertyTaxRates.org.
So a buyer who closes on a home that's been in the same family since 2018 isn't stepping into that seller's frozen number. A seller's tax bill that looks remarkably low for a $900,000 home isn't a clue about what the buyer will pay. It's a clue about how long the seller has owned it.
Three City and State Programs, Plus a County Exemption
The city's own 2026 property tax materials lay out the layers plainly. Alongside the floating exemption, Alpharetta offers a basic homestead exemption of $45,000 off assessed value, which the city describes as among the highest in the state. Together, the city says its homestead exemptions save Alpharetta homeowners more than $11 million annually.
Then there's a fourth layer that showed up earlier this year and won't repeat. Governor Brian Kemp's Homeowner Tax Relief Grant, created by House Bill 973 and signed into law on March 3, 2026, refunds up to $18,000 off assessed value for homesteaded properties across Georgia as part of an $850 million statewide relief package. Layered onto the city's existing programs, Alpharetta expects that one-time credit to add another $1.3 million in local savings, pushing combined homeowner savings past $12.3 million for the current fiscal year.
Here are the three city and state programs described above:
| Program | What it does | When it started |
|---|---|---|
| City floating exemption | Caps taxable value growth at the lesser of 3% or CPI | 2018 |
| City basic homestead exemption | $45,000 off assessed value | Ongoing |
| Homeowner Tax Relief Grant (HB 973) | Up to $18,000 off assessed value, one time only | 2026 tax year |
None of it applies until a new owner files. Fulton County runs a comparable floating exemption of its own at the county level, separate from the city's, which means the layers described here include the city's floating and basic exemptions, the county's separate floating exemption, and the one-year state credit.
The School Tax Line Runs On Different Rules Entirely
There's a fourth taxing authority on every Alpharetta bill that doesn't share in any of this. Fulton County Schools is the largest single line item on most homeowners' property tax bills, and according to a Tax Foundation review of how Georgia's largest school systems responded to the state's 2024 property tax reform, Fulton County Schools chose to opt out of the statewide floating homestead exemption created by House Bill 581. That state law, approved by nearly 63 percent of Georgia voters in a November 2024 referendum, was designed to cap homestead taxable value growth at the rate of inflation everywhere in Georgia unless, as Ownwell explains, a local government opted out by March 1, 2025.
City Administrator Chris Lagerbloom explained why Alpharetta itself didn't bother opting out at all: the city already had its own floating exemption running since 2018, so the new state law and the local one could simply coexist, with the proper exemption applied to the benefit of the property owner. But that logic only works where a local program already existed. Fulton County Schools had no equivalent local cap, so opting out of the state's CPI-linked backstop means that portion of a homeowner's bill doesn't get the same inflation ceiling the city and county exemptions provide.
Practically, that means a single Alpharetta tax bill is stitched together from at least three different governing bodies making three different decisions about how fast a homeowner's taxable value is allowed to rise, and one of those bodies chose not to cap it at all through the mechanism most Georgians think of as "the new homestead law."
Why A Similarly Priced Home In Cumming Runs On Different Math
A buyer cross-shopping Alpharetta against Forsyth County is comparing two systems that were built through entirely different processes in the same legislative window. According to Citizen Portal, Forsyth County Schools worked with its state legislative delegation to design its own fixed cap, House Bill 717, which limits reassessed homestead value increases to 4 percent annually and includes a sunset written into the law. Forsyth County voters approved that locally drafted homestead exemption in the same November 2024 election.
The two approaches aren't identical, and they don't move in lockstep. A CPI-linked cap tracks inflation, which the Forsyth district's own finance staff pointed out has swung anywhere from roughly 1 percent to 8 percent over the past several years depending on the year measured, while a flat 4 percent cap gives predictability but caps out lower in low-inflation years. A buyer comparing a $700,000 resale in Alpharetta to a similarly priced new build in Cumming isn't just comparing two millage rates. They're comparing two entirely different formulas for how fast their own future tax bill is allowed to climb, set by two school districts that solved the same problem in opposite ways.
Neither Cap Touches the Millage Rate Itself
None of these exemptions stop a local government from raising the tax rate applied to that capped value. The floating exemptions and the new state credit all limit how fast taxable value can grow. They do nothing to the millage rate itself, which is set independently each year based on budget needs. A homeowner protected by every layer available in Alpharetta can still see their bill rise if the city, county, or school board raises its rate, even in a year when the capped assessed value barely moves. The exemption is a speed limit on one input, not a ceiling on the total bill.
2026 Is the Last Year This Patchwork Exists
Georgia's legislature revisited the whole system again this year. The HOME Act, Senate Bill 33, was signed into law on May 11, 2026, and it makes an inflation-linked cap on homestead assessments mandatory for every county, city, and school district in Georgia starting with the 2027 tax year. The local opt-out that let Fulton County Schools sit outside HB 581, and that let Forsyth stick with its own 4 percent design, goes away. The new law also opens the door to a Local Homestead Option Sales Tax that counties can put to voters starting in 2028 to fund additional relief.
What that means for a market currently running three or four different local caps side by side isn't fully settled yet. It's reasonable to expect the differences between Alpharetta and Cumming to narrow starting in 2027, though pre-existing local programs like Alpharetta's 2018 floating exemption were built independently of the state law and it isn't yet clear how they'll interact with a new mandatory statewide floor. For a buyer weighing a purchase this fall, that makes 2026 a genuinely unusual year to be comparing these two markets, since the rules both towns are currently running on are scheduled to converge in ways nobody has fully modeled yet.
What This Means Before You Write An Offer
The tax bill on a listing sheet tells a buyer what the seller pays, and almost nothing about what the buyer will pay. Before assuming a home's current tax line is a reliable number to budget against, it's worth asking three things: how long has the current owner held their homestead exemption, what is the property's current assessed value rather than its market value, and has the seller's bill been sitting under a floating cap long enough that the gap between assessed and market value has grown large. A seller who's owned since 2018 may be paying tax on an assessed value that's meaningfully behind the home's current worth, and none of that gap transfers.
Does a homestead exemption transfer to a new buyer? No. Fulton County's own assessor's office requires a new filing whenever the deed changes, and the exemption comes off the property the moment ownership changes hands.
Will my property taxes definitely go up when I buy in Alpharetta? Not necessarily. The buyer's own assessment and exemption eligibility also matter.
What changes in 2027? Georgia's HOME Act ends local opt-outs from the state's inflation-linked cap and makes it mandatory everywhere. How that interacts with cities that already had their own local exemptions, like Alpharetta's since 2018, is still an open question the state hasn't fully answered.
If you're weighing a resale in Alpharetta against something new in Forsyth County and want the real first-year number instead of the one printed on the listing, Mano Sells Homes can run the math with you before you write the offer. Let's connect.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
