Are You Paying Too Much In Property Taxes?
Regular Accidental FIRE readers know I have a background in GIS and mapping and that I constantly scour the web for cool mapping tools. Being this is primarily a personal finance blog I have a special place in my dorky heart for mapping tools that portray an aspect of finance in a slick and informative way.
When it comes to housing and real estate, I’ve posted about tools that compare income and real estate prices, and maps that show houses in America valued at under $100,000. I did another post highlighting a tool that shows median list prices for houses based on zip code.
One aspect of real estate that I had not found a cool tool for is property taxes. Well, now I have. Let’s check it out!
The Maps
The folks at SparkRental have a really nice page dedicated to property taxes in America with some slick maps. The first map shows property tax rates by state in America.
While interesting and helpful from a broader perspective, property taxes are different by county across America. But the state map does show general trends and here what it looks like.
If you hover your mouse over any state a pop-up will appear showing the average property tax rate, the median property taxes, and the median home value (on the SparkRental page map, not the one above).
I’m always interested in geographic trends, and this map shows generally higher property taxes in the northern states, but mainly those from the grain belt to the northeast. Texas and Florida are the only two southern states with average property tax rates over 1%.
The next map on their page shows the median amount of property taxes collected annually by state.
Obviously the amount of taxes collected will be higher in states that have higher home and property values, even if their property tax rate isn’t necessarily the highest.
New England and especially New Jersey stand out here. The median amount of property taxes paid annually in New Jersey is a whopping $7800. That means half of property owners are paying more than that!
For me this map isn’t ideal because one of the areas I’ve considered retiring to is New England, specifically the beautiful corridor from the Adirondacks east to the White Mountains of New Hampshire.
The state-wide data show I’d pay pretty hefty property taxes if I bought a home in that area. But property tax rates are almost always based on a smaller jurisdiction, usually at the county level.
So that takes us to the next map on the SparkRental page and the one that has the most value.
Let’s Get More Detailed
The next map on the page breaks down tax rates by county for the entire country. Unlike the others this map has a zoom function to help pinpoint some of the small counties.
When you hover your mouse over a county a pop up appears showing the average property tax rate, the median property taxes, and the median home value for that county.
Here’s what it looks like for the country with a pop up example shown.
If I zoom to the area I mentioned before, a more nuanced picture arises. While property tax rates are generally high in the entire region, there are clearly counties with lower rates.
My eyes gravitated to that lighter colored county in eastern New Hampshire with a relatively low property tax rate for the region. It’s Carroll county, and it’s super close to both the amazing White Mountains as well as the famous lake district. There’s climbing, skiing, hiking, and paddling galore all nearby.
Berkshire county Massachusetts has an even lower property tax rate and is a gorgeous area that I had not considered.
Maps like this can clearly help to narrow down a search with tax optimization in mind.
Geoarbitrage
So there you have it financial warriors, a great mapping resource that lays out property taxes in America by state and county with home values included.
I post lots of tools like this that show various aspects of money and finance from a location perspective. If you’re considering Geoarbitrage in the United States this mapping tool can help you find a place to live with a reasonable property tax rate that meets your specific needs.
Also be sure to check out my Geoarbitrage Resources Page that has tons of great tools to help you find your perfect location.
I hope you find these resources handy and I will continue to expose valuable tools that can help when deciding on a geoarbitrage strategy.
OMG this is fascinating. I’m particularly interested in the contrast between California and Texas. Cali gets a (completely justified) bad rap for its income taxes and cost of living, but I think we more than make up for it on the property tax front. One thing I’m not sure this captures is how much property taxes can increase from year to year, and that’s where Cali shines even more. The assessed value of property can’t increase by more than 2% per year, even though houses appreciate way faster than that. The result is that once you have a house (which is admittedly an expensive market to get into), property taxes just don’t increase by much compared to how much the house goes up in value. This is of course a very controversial tax policy. Anyways, it just goes to show there’s more to geoarbitrage than income taxes and the up-front cost of housing.
Yes how a state gets its tax revenue varies widely and I have other tools on my geoarbitrage page that show income taxes etc. W have issues here in the D.C. area with older folks living on social security who own houses that have appreciated so much that they can’t afford the property taxes even though they own the house.
was just talking with someone on FB on the same subject. I have a house in So. Cal that’s only worth $350k but my property taxes are only $2600 per year. The boyfriend’s house is worth $450k, he’s had it for 30 yrs and he only pays $2400 per year. We would love to move, too many people here and this is definitely a welfare state, but we can’t find a state that has our weather, close to mountains (an hour away), somewhat close to the ocean (2 hours away) and has semi-stable property taxes…Any state we have looked at, we wouldn’t be able to stay retired because the property taxes are too much and can just keep rising!!!! You have to look at the “whole” picture.
Super interesting! Thanks for sharing!
Thanks dude!
As a hike-centric early retiree also eyeing New England, this is a great lens to augment my search. Splendid find, thank you for sharing!
“hike-centric”, I love that, thanks for stopping by!
GREAT links! I was pleased to find “my” county in North Georgia one of the lowest in the country, at a mere .455%, with a median of just $837. Thanks for yet another awesome resource!
That is low Fritz, but I already knew you had things optimized 🙂
Nice visualizations, except for the part where you zoomed in on my state (NY) and it was all purple.
Haha! Yes New York is ridiculously purple on that map. But New Jersey has some counties that take the cake!
Love this tool, thanks for sharing! We’re considering a move to northern New England as well for our early retirement home. The higher property taxes have definitely been one of the factors on our mind, as it’s more than the rates we’ve budgeted for a move to the mountains of NC/GA/VA or CO. That said, there are a lot of good that comes from the higher taxes in some areas, and I’m happy to support that if I ultimately feel like my tax dollars are being used wisely for the greater good.
So far I’ve just been looking up houses and property tax rates in towns we’re considering, but this visual is a much easier way to narrow things down. We’ll have schools to consider, which adds another layer of complexity and sometimes rules out the outlier counties that have lower rates.
Schools are very important to consider, so don’t forget to check out my geoarbitrage resources page as I have some tools for that. I posted about it here
Nice maps. I always complain about our property tax, but it looks like we’re okay comparing to other locations. Although, I still think it’s better to live across the river in WA. The property tax rate is similar and they don’t have income tax! They have a sale tax, but that’s much smaller than income tax IMO.
Yes, Washington State is on my list of potential states to retire to. Your house is high cost though, so even a low rate means a high tax bill.
we used to pay a pittance here in buffalo but the assessed values are finally catching up with reality. i think we lay out around 4.5k/year and i really don’t mind. my boss lives 20 minutes away and pays over 7k for a similar value house in a town with special snowflake kids in a safe space school district.
i like that area of western mass you mentioned. williamstown is a nice place. i ran some races at williams back in the day. one thing about the ADK area of NY is lower property values so it might become a wash. the state income tax is a little onerous here though.
Yeah I’m torn on NY as a settling spot because of the ridiculous income taxes, in addition to the brain-dead and corrupt politicians. But I guess the latter is kind of commonplace. My property tax rate is way lower than yours down here but since my home value is so high I actually pay a little more than you annually.
Don’t forget, NH has no state income tax or sales tax, so higher property taxes may not look so bad.
Yes! I wanted to keep the post on topic but I do know that and it’s one of the reasons I like it so much, besides it being stunningly gorgeous 🙂
Excellent dataset! Thanks for sharing! As someone who’s hunting around for a new place to live this data is invaluable Dave!
Appreciate all that you do!
I know you’ve been ;ooking Tako so I’m here at your service – don’t forget my geoarbitrage tools page!