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17 States Where Property Tax Rates Are Lower Now Than a Decade Ago

June 17, 2024

4 min Read

Written by Vance Cariaga

Edited by Cory Dudak

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Nobody is exactly thrilled about paying property taxes, but most accept it as the price of owning a home. Depending on where you live, property taxes can be a major budget item or a relatively minor one. In most states, you will pay a higher rate the longer you stay in a home, but that’s not always the case.

All 50 states and the District of Columbia charge property taxes to homeowners based on the value of a property. Local governments typically impose property taxes on city, county and school district residents. But state governments are the typical entities that levy personal property taxes. Property tax bills are almost always issued once a year.

To get an idea of how location plays a major role in your property tax bill, just look at the different rates you have to pay. New Jersey has the highest effective property tax rate in the country, at 2.23% of the assessed value of a home. Hawaii has the lowest, at 0.32%. What this means is that if you own a $500,000 home, you will pay about $11,150 in property taxes in New Jersey and about $1,600 in Hawaii.

In 2023, the average New Jersey property-tax bill topped $9,800, according to New Jersey Spotlight News. In contrast, the median property tax bill in Alabama — which has the second-lowest rates in the country — was only $646, according to data cited by CNBC.

The following 10 states have the highest property tax rates:

State	Effective Property Tax Rate
New Jersey	2.23%
Illinois	2.08%
New Hampshire	1.93%
Vermont	1.83%
Connecticut	1.79%
Texas	1.68%
Nebraska	1.63%
Wisconsin	1.61%
Ohio	1.59%
Iowa	1.52%

Here are the 10 states with the lowest property tax rates:

State	Effective Property Tax Rate
Hawaii	0.32%
Alabama	0.40%
Colorado	0.55%
Wyoming	0.56%
Louisiana	0.56%
South Carolina	0.57%
West Virginia	0.57%
Utah	0.57%
Nevada	0.59%
Delaware	0.61%

About two-thirds of the states have either raised property taxes over the past decade or left them as is, according to a study from GOBankingRates, which pulled data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis from both 2024 and 2014. But there are some exceptions that have gone in the other direction.