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Direct mail basics

Where to get every address in a Florida city (free, and what the paid lists add)

Florida publishes every parcel in every county, with the owner's name and mailing address, as a free download. Here is where to find it, how to cut it to one city, what the county map offices and appraisers add, what the free files miss, and when a paid list is worth the money.

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If you want to mail every home in a Florida city, you don't have to start by buying a list. The state publishes every parcel in every county for free, and the counties publish their address maps for free too. This guide shows where each file lives, how to cut it to one city, and where the free data falls short. For the three ways to reach homes, and where a list fits among them, start with Direct Mail 101.

The free one with names: the state tax roll

Every county property appraiser sends its assessment roll to the Florida Department of Revenue, and the Department publishes all 67 of them. "The Department of Revenue publishes assessment rolls in compliance with chapter 119, Florida Statutes," and the download page mentions no fee (Florida DOR data portal). Broward's appraiser confirms it: "Our Tax Roll file submission is available at no charge from the Florida Department of Revenue's website" (BCPA price list).

The file you want is the NAL file, short for Name, Address, Legal. It comes as a CSV with field names in the first row, one row per parcel (2026 NAL User's Guide). The fields that matter for mail:

Field What it holds
OWN_NAME The primary owner's name
OWN_ADDR1, OWN_CITY, OWN_STATE, OWN_ZIPCD The owner's mailing address, where the tax bill goes
PHY_ADDR1, PHY_CITY, PHY_ZIPCD The street address of the property itself
JV Just value, the appraiser's opinion of market value
DOR_UC Land use code (001 is a single-family home)
ACT_YR_BLT Year built
SALE_PRC1, SALE_YR1 The most recent sale price and year
TAX_AUTH_CD The taxing authorities that cover the parcel, cities included

The roll also carries homestead fields (DOR NAL summary). A Florida homestead exemption requires the owner to make the property "his or her permanent residence" (DOR exemptions), so a homestead flag is a strong sign the owner lives there.

When it updates. The Department lists "July 1 – Preliminary rolls" and "October – Initial final rolls," with final rolls after the value adjustment boards finish. Publishing "can take up to a month." Older years are available by request.

Cutting the roll to one city

A county roll covers the whole county. To keep only one city, filter on TAX_AUTH_CD, which the guide defines as "a code identifying the taxing authorities whose jurisdictions include the parcel." Cities are among those authorities. The codes differ by county, so ask your property appraiser which code is your city.

The other way is a map. Broward (Municipal Boundaries) and Palm Beach (Municipal Boundaries) publish their city limits free, and Miami-Dade offers its municipal boundaries free on its open data site. Lay the parcels or address points over the boundary and keep what falls inside.

Don't filter on PHY_CITY. A city name on an address is the postal city, and "Postal ZIP codes do not always align with recognized municipal boundaries" (CRS IF12132). Our guide to city limits vs. ZIP codes shows how far off that can be in one Broward town.

The free one without names: county address points

Each county's map office publishes a layer with a point for every site address. These carry no owner names, so they suit mail addressed to "Current Resident".

All three are offered "as is," with no promise that they are complete or accurate. None of the licenses we read forbids commercial use, and none grants an open license either.

The appraisers' own downloads

The county property appraisers sell or give away their own versions, sometimes with more detail than the state copy.

Those are the appraisers' prices as published on October 7, 2026.

What the free data misses

Confidential owners. Florida law shields some owners' records, and those parcels are left out of the state file or have the owner's name and mailing address redacted. Palm Beach's property table notes "Owner information and mailing address have been redacted for CONFIDENTIAL records."

Renters. The tax roll lists owners. Mail sent to the owner's mailing address reaches the owner, wherever they live. To reach whoever lives in the home, mail the property address with an occupant line such as "Current Resident," a format USPS allows (DMM 602.3.4).

Absentee owners. When the owner's mailing address differs from the property address, the owner lives somewhere else. Mail to the property reaches whoever lives there, often a tenant, and mail to the owner's address reaches the owner out of town. Compare the two address columns, or use the homestead flag, to tell them apart.

Units. Miami-Dade publishes condo units as a separate layer, so check that the file you downloaded carries unit numbers before you count homes.

Freshness. Even a new roll is weeks or months old by the time you mail, and people move. Addressed mail that uses names must be updated against the USPS change-of-address file within 95 days before it mails (DMM 602.5.1). Mail addressed to "Current Resident" is exempt from that rule. Either way, the addresses should be checked against USPS records first. Our guide to list hygiene explains each step.

What a paid list adds

A list company compiles its file from many sources. Click2Mail says its consumer file is rebuilt from "public real estate data, other compiled lists, and telephone directories" (Click2Mail lists). What you pay for is the work you would otherwise do yourself:

What it costs, from the vendors' own pages on October 7, 2026: occupant lists from $9.50 per thousand at Melissa and $12 per thousand at Click2Mail; consumer lists with names from $25 per thousand at Melissa and $33.66 at Click2Mail. Our guide to mailing lists compares the types, and renting vs. owning a list explains why most paid lists are good for one mailing while the public files are yours to keep.

The comparison for 5,000 homes

Say you want one postcard in each of 5,000 homes inside a city. Here are three ways to get the addresses, mailed with our list service, and the no-list option for comparison.

The addresses Total, with printing and postage
State tax roll, cut to the city Free $3,100 to $3,650
Vendor occupant list About $47.50 to $60 about $3,148 to $3,710
Vendor consumer list, with names About $125 to $168 about $3,225 to $3,818
EDDM, 6.5" × 9", no list None needed $2,695

Each list row includes $1,650 for printing, list cleanup, addressing and presort of 5,000 of our 6" × 9" postcards, plus $1,450 to $2,000 in postage. The EDDM row is $1,395 for print and mail prep plus $1,300 in postage. The vendor figures are 5,000 records at the per-thousand prices above. Our list postage is billed at the actual USPS rate after presort, usually 29¢–40¢ per piece, and only on the pieces that mail (list-mail pricing). EDDM postage is the USPS retail rate of 26¢ a piece (EDDM pricing).

Two things the table shows. First, the list itself is the smallest line, so the free roll saves less than you might expect over a cheap occupant list. What it gives you is the owner's name, the home's value and year built, and a city code, at no cost. Second, EDDM costs less per piece, but it mails whole postal routes, and those routes cross city lines. If the city line matters, a list cut to it can cost less per home you actually want.

Or let us do it

Everything here is free to download and yours to use. If you would rather skip the CSV work, tell us your city. We may already have the list for your city. If you have pulled one yourself, send it in Excel or CSV and we clean it, address it, presort it and mail it, and confirm the count and postage before anything prints.

Tell us your city. We may already have the list for your city. If not, send us the file you pulled and we clean it, address it and mail it, with the count and postage confirmed before anything prints. Send us your city →

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