Home owners, what are the property taxes in your state?

[lebkuchen]

I know a lot of people like to retire where there is no sales tax, but taxes have to come from somewhere. I've seen property taxes in such states at around $10,000 per year. Wow. If you live ten years, there goes $100,000 of your nest egg.

[KamaAina]

1. Not nearly enough (CA)

Thanks to the infamous Prop 13, property taxes (commercial, too!) are kept artificially low. Thus, not only is every other kind of tax through the roof, but localities, even wealthy ones, are chronically strapped for money. For years the state bailed them out using its surplus. Then Ahh-nuld came along, and bye-bye surplus.

[Cleita]

13. Yep, we need to repeal Prop 13.

We do need something in its place to protect low income property owners and retirees. But do we really need to give out of state multi-millionaires like John McCain and Mitt Romney low property taxes on their properties here? How about all those Mideast Oil sheiks and foreign banks and other businesses? How about all those mansions with way more bedrooms and bathrooms than a single family needs as well as out buildings on acres?

How about all those multi-millionaires who own extra vacation homes all over the place and they are luxury homes, not little cabins in the woods. We have more expensive luxury properties than most states. It's time to tax them to the max to restore free education in our university and state system and to get our homeless off the streets and into housing like we used to have before Prop. 13 passed.

[KamaAina]

15. Or at the very least not include commercial property under it

the so-called "split roll" approach.

Nearly everyplace else simply caps property taxes for low-income and/or elderly owner-occupiers. But I guess that just makes too much sense.

[Gormy Cuss]

26. Residential owners pay a far bigger share of property tax now than they did in 1978.

Commercial owners use partial ownership transfers to keep their Prop. 13 protection. It's easy and common to structure sales this way. OTOH, residential owners tend to sell outright and the new owners start at a much higher basis than the old owners. Residential owners in aggregate pay more for real estate taxes than commercial interests do. That's another peculiar side effect of Prop. 13.

A split roll would be a great step forward.

[Tikki]

18. We pay around $1,700 a year for 1/4 acre two homes on the lot equivalent of 5 bedroom 3 bathroom..

1,900 square feet because of prop 13 and because we have lived on and owned this property since the 1970's….
It is true, this is less than some other States for equivalent property.

Our community does have real estate turn-over and a new owner pays more than the previous home-owner in property taxes.

We have no plans on moving.

The Tikkis

[KamaAina]

20. "and a new owner pays more than the previous home-owner in property taxes."

This is often not the case for commercial property. The scam works like this: The property is in the name of "123 El Camino Holdings LLC" or some such. The actual property is never sold; 123 El Camino Holdings LLC is.

[badtoworse]

2. Too damned high in NJ

I'm at about $11K and lots of folks consider that a good deal. We've also got a state income tax and a sales tax.

[snooper2]

7. Damn they are high, I randomly found a house for sale in Hawthorne and looked it up

348 REA AVE
HAWTHORNE, NJ 07506
$349,000
Beds: 4 Baths: 2
Sq Ft: Listing #: 1340093


$9400 a year in taxes, LOL Jersey ain't that great

http://tax1.co.monmouth.nj.us/cgi-bin/m4.cgi?district=1604&l02=160400195____00009__01_____M

[unblock]

11. i moved from nj to ct. i have about twice as much house now and my prop taxes are LOWER.

i'm not at all opposed to high taxes if you get value for it, but nj is ridiculous.

high property taxes are supposed to get you good schools, but nj is a random mess. great districts, terrible districts all pay very high taxes.

[JustAnotherGen]

19. I'm with you

Just under 9K in Flemington.

[bklyncowgirl]

25. Absolutely too high and Christie did nothing to stem the tide.

Over $6000 for a shack on a postage stamp.

[snooper2]

3. It's all public data do a search

Pick a state, randomly pick an address, it's going to vary a lot depending on a lot of factors you know right

(It's not by State it's by county)

[Blue Diadem]

23. add school district & city/town/village to that as well. n/t

[Ishoutandscream2]

4. Home appraised at 175 K, taxes 3,975 bucks (Texas)

That's city, county, and school all rolled into one.

[MANative]

5. I live in Fairfield County, CT and my annual property taxes are

about $6400, which I think is outrageously high for the services we get. Our city has a volunteer fire department, no trash pick-up (have to pay $35/month for a private service), and no water services (well and septic). My mother, in a similar city near Cape Cod, with a house about the same size (2800 sq ft and much newer) pays about $2600 per year.

[Joel thakkar]

10. Well someone has to pay

for the salary/pension of the teachers...a portion of property tax is usually school district tax which goes directly to pay for the teacher's salary.

[upaloopa]

24. It goes to other things in the school district also

[MANative]

39. I know that, obviously, and do support paying for a good education

System, even though I've never had kids of my own. I get that it's part the social contract. I just think the dollar amount is excessive. If I could sell my house, I'd move back to Massachusetts in a flash.

[KurtNYC]

6. My landlord is appraised at $450,000 and pays around $10,000

About 2.2% This is upstate NY and is mostly school tax, about $6000 school and $4000 other.

[JustAnotherGen]

21. What community?

I grew up in Scottsville, live in Rochester, Greece, and Buffalo - I never saw 10K in property taxes in Western NY. . .or are you really on the East side of the state or Southern Tier?

[KurtNYC]

28. Hudson valley, a small town with a declining population

The pop is about half what it was 60 years ago and declines 1% per year.

Everyone is mentioning dollar amounts but aren't prop taxes a percentage of the assessed value?

By state averages, the worst are:

New Jersey - 1.89%
New Hampshire - 1.86%
Texas - 1.81%
Wisconsin - 1.76%
Nebraska - 1.70%
Illinois - 1.73%
Connecticut - 1.63%
Michigan - 1.62%
Vermont - 1.59%
North Dakota - 1.42%

But I have often seen counties in NY among the worst when you add in ALL taxes based on property (schools, bonds, etc.)

Btw, Used to live in Western NY, home of: red hots, white hots, wings, "speedies" and delicious beef on weck.

[JustAnotherGen]

30. That's why!

Hudson county - to me is well - just outside of NYC!

Side bar - my first job out of University - my General Manager . . . was a Zweigle. His mom's family. Every single Friday he woudl 'grill' for our small branch out on the dock Zweigles with his homemade hot sauce! Speidies are Syracuse, Weck is Buff - roch is red hots . . . and everyone how there does wings. Not buffalo wings. Just wings.


ETA - I live in Hunterdon County NJ now . . . and I have the property taxes to show for it.

[DURHAM D]

8. Some places exempt seniors from property taxes.

[Blue_In_AK]

27. Here they exempt the first $150,000 for seniors.

[onehandle]

9. Zero for us. We sold our house and will never own real estate in the U.S. ever again.

We've saved thousands over the last couple of years.

[enough]

12. In PA, property taxes are local. Our highest taxes are from the local school board.

We also pay County property taxes. Some townships also have property taxes.

[Holly_Hobby]

14. Ohio...

Sales tax 7%. Our property taxes go to the county, house appraised by county at $64K, we pay $1,989 per year in taxes. That doesn't include trash pick-up, that charge is tacked on to our $215 per quarter water bill. However, my husband is disabled, so we'll get a homestead exemption next year which will save us 20%. It was the last year you could get such exemption in Ohio without meeting income requirements, thanks, Gov Kasich Lots of *not* rich people are going to pay more than they should.

[Bandit]

16. The millage rate where I live is 10.5

Which means $1050. for every hundred thousand of property value.

[hfojvt]

17. they aren't

by far most of the mill rate is set by
1. the city government
2. the school board
3. the county government

Further there will be differences in housing prices between cities and counties.

For an easy example, when I was house hunting I kinda settled on a house that was $57,000. Then I did some more searching and found essentially the same house (actually better in many ways) and in a better city, for only $35,000.

But I also saw homes, a pair of new homes for $100,000 or so. They were, unlike mine, small, they had no basements, no garage, no driveway (mine does not either), very small and steep yards, no fence for the yard, and were in a nothing town. (a suburb though, so all your services were just a twenty minute commute away through heavy traffic)

So it is kinda tough to compare mill rates, unless you have some sort of housing equvilancy. Even if my mill rate was higher, I probably would be paying less in taxes than either of those two houses, which, imo, were lower in quality than mine.

[IphengeniaBlumgarten]

22. Louisiana here...

Property taxes are modest, say $1000 for a house with market value of about $230,000 and a homestead exemption. Sales taxes, though, at least 7.5% -- there is local variation. Seniors are not exempt from property taxes, but appraisals on their homes are frozen for those with modest incomes, say under $50,000 per year, don't recall exactly. Schools not that great, but I guess retirees aren't that concerned about that issue.

[joeglow3]

29. Nebraska - average between 2% & 3% annually.

[MissB]

31. Oregon.

Depends on the county. In Portland, depends on the house value. Ours is around $600k and we pay about $8k/year.

We did have a property tax limiting measure put in place in the 90s, so the max increase is about 3% per year, dependent on several factors.

[Blue_In_AK]

32. Median property tax in Anchorage is $3,563

(based on a home valued at $269,000) or 1.32 percent of the value. We rank fairly high, but Alaska has no income or sales tax (some municipalities have a small sales tax, but Anchorage doesn't).

[IrishAyes]

33. Don't want to mention which MidWestern state for reasons of privacy,

but at least in the rural towns the annual property tax can be as low as $184 a year (mine) on a hundred year old house, no matter how big or how much you improve it so long as you don't increase the size. My state does tax personal property lightly but I no longer have a vehicle so it doesn't impact me. Even a much smaller house than mine, if new, will carry a lot more tax but still nothing like the East/West Coasts or developed upper Midwest. I'd be in Calais ME right now if not for the taxes; well, and the higher initial cost of real estate there. I bought a huge old fixer at auction about 5 minutes before it was too far gone to repair, and I only paid $14,500. Knowing I'd have to plow another $40K into it ASAP to make it habitable, but still that low sale price affected my taxes. I've come out way, way ahead of the game. Frugality rules my life, but it doesn't bother me like it does some people because I'm used to it and good at it and have simple tastes anyway. Somebody else might be miserable.

Since outbuildings don't incur taxation unless they're at least 12' on any one side, you guessed it: I have TWO backyard sheds, one on either side of the yard, each 11'11" on all four sides. No taxes. On skids.

The main thing a person needs to be emotionally prepared for if moving to a different area of the country, especially small towns, is the shocking level of rampant xenophobia. Many if not most of the inhabitants seem to consider themselves the last bastions of civilization and any intruders a dangerous infection. They will make it abundantly clear they consider anyone without a bloodline stretching back at least a hundred years in their county - maybe even in their own town - as beneath them. Whether they realize it or not, of course, they're more likely desperate to keep the newcomer from seeing them as they really are.

If you can tough it out nearly a decade or you don't have $ to leave, eventually you might win a few over well enough that they'll tell you at least part of the truth - that you could live here 30-40 years and still not be fully accepted. Some will tolerate you more easily by then and even speak nicely in passing - at arm's length by no mistake. Even if they realize how wrong that is, they're not about to change. Now if you happen to be a damnYankee tea bagger and move to the Midwest redneck section, you'll have a little easier go of it. But an unrepentant liberal damnYankee, they'll try their best to fight the civil war all over again.

Especially a person moving alone wants to be as self sufficient as possible in all ways. I won't go into the litany of horrors I've experienced, but I've seen more fragile people move here even in couples and then run screaming into the night. Even if I won a big lottery tomorrow, though, I no longer want to leave. Restricted and sometimes lonely as it can be, I've carved out my own little niche and would stay for spite if nothing better. My house is much improved, my landscaping has matured, and I've actually grown allergic to the thought of getting too cozy with most of these people. Some I like and even admire in certain ways, but nobody I miss when they're not there. Couldn't survive w/o dogs to love and the internet to roam, though. My house is crammed with hundreds of books bought 5/$1 at library sales, and I've collected quite a few treasures (to me) at rummage and yard sales, etc. As for the people here, I'm nice back when they are and get right back in their face when they're not. It's that simple.

So you get a lot of benefits at a low cost in money; just know that the balance will come out of your hide. Then decide if that cheap housing and low taxes are worth it to you. But one way or another, pay you shall.

[FarCenter]

34. If you add together sales, income, property, and other state and local taxes, they vary by about 50%

But most states are not at the extremes.

And your preferences for renting/owning, large/small abode, level of income, sources of income, specific municipality/school district, etc. are probably more important.

For example, states vary in how they treat retirement income from various sources for income tax purposes.

Also consider variations in state estate and inheritance taxes if you are leaving an estate.

[FreeJoe]

35. 3%

My property tax rate is about 3%. Sales tax is about 8.25%. No income tax.

We will probably retire wherever our kids settle, but if that ends up not being a factor, we will consider moving to a state that taxes income more heavily and sales less. That would be pretty far down our list of criteria, but it will factor into the overall cost-of-living calculations we would do.

[melm00se]

36. in NC

assessed value: $257K
property taxes (all in): 2,400

[Kaleva]

37. Mine is $500 a year.

Purchased the home for $24k 13 years ago.

[giftedgirl77]

38. SC house is appraised at 194k on. 5 acre

we paid $800 for 2013. For next year hopefully they will be reduced along with my car registration due to my VA rating.

[Tracer]

40. Property taxes go by town in MA, and they are killers.

In my town it is $17.99 per $1,000 of assessed valuation.

Meaning I pay $7,024 per year for a ordinary-sized Cape Cod house.

My only saving grace is that there is a "Senior Circuit Breaker" tax refund of up to $800 for seniors (of which I am one) who pay more than 10% of their income in property taxes.