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I sold my home in Orange County NY because my taxes were $13,000 a year. The house was assessed at $550K, which was way above it's actual market value. I sold it for $395K and considering myself lucky to get that much. I grieved my taxes every year. I even taped conversations with the assessors where they admitted they went on my property when I wasn't home to peer in the windows, multiple times. So I invited them into my home to show them they were wrong about their assumptions, but still they stuck by their assumptions stating it was their "opinion" anyway, and refused to come back to look again. I took pictures showing they were wrong, but the Town Board refused to look at them. I had the building inspector come to the home to look, and even though he himself said I was right, those supposed improvements did not exist inside, it didn't matter. I grieved my taxes, to no avail. Crooked and corrupt, these small towns. Finally I hired a lawyer and went up to the county level for a hearing but the hearing officer sided with the assessors because my appraiser made mistakes in her report due to the lack of comps, and she didn't go with me to explain her report. My lawyer was useless. In these small towns, it's a good-old-boys network anyway. I guess now they all know it was not worth $550K, as I sold it for $395K and I was just lucky to sell it at all in the still-not-recovered real estate market in Orange County (where there are few jobs).
I sold my home because I could not take the pressure from them anymore, or the stress, and I could not afford the $15K taxes.
New York State, by and large, has the highest property taxes in the nation, to my knowledge. Certainly in Long Island, Westchester and Putnam. And surprisingly in many small towns in central and upstate NY. Old towns, need a lot of infrastructure updating. Failing village sewer systems with rotting pipes, tainted wells from farmland pesticides, flooding from rivers during recent hurricanes and superstorm events, and future climate change events, and there are all those needed roadway improvements from salt, heaving and cracking from ice, and all those potholes. All these infrastructure improvements cost money to improve. The next thing you are dealing with is New York's public servants pension funds, which is a debt that has not yet come to be paid, but that bill is coming soon. Especially in places like New York with its high paid public servants with high benefits. The governor is currently proposing a property tax freeze, which is a good thing, but then you will have opposition from families with children who need improvements in aging public schools, as well as more teachers, and better libraries and instructional equipment. Taxes are only going to continue to go higher.
I've noticed that generally speaking the state of Massachusetts has lower property taxes than New York even though many of the home prices might be higher. However, many New England towns and villages have older homes, and older infrastructure, in all of these old New England towns. The taxes are going to continue to be a problem. Northampton, a charming town in Massachusetts, needs infrastructure improvements due to flood control for the heavy rain events. Impermeable driveways, etc leave nowhere for the water to go. The property owners are upset that their property cap was just overridden due to this necessity proposed by "those darn do-gooders".
As the above photos from previous poster attest, without public servants like building inspectors, zoning board members, and highway departments, towns fall apart. Infrastructure and housing issues don't get better with time, they just get worse. There are cutbacks on public servants, yet our taxes continue to increase.
In my own research I've discovered there are states with less property taxes than others, like Arizona, and Florida. Speaking of Florida, the state is constructing a central Florida train line, Sunrail. A great idea, that they want to extend into other towns in the future. The residents ask, why should we do that for future generations? Why should we have to pay that bill for transit we will not get to enjoy in the future? The answer is, that's planning ahead, and for the state to thrive, it needs to provide public transportation, for the older generation as well as the younger.
I'd say, move to Arizona for cheap property taxes, since there's no snow removal and minimal maintenance. However, they seem to have water shortage issues in the lower half of the state, and people say there will be water conflicts in the future.
I'm looking to find the place with the lower property taxes myself. Tempted to move to California. An agent told me the property taxes are seemingly less because they are frozen, however, the new buyer pays a high rate based on the sales price. which means those taxes the next homeowner (the buyer) will be paying could be a heck of a lot higher when they pay those higher housing prices that have risen 20% in many California towns just in the last year.
Here in this Hudson Valley small town, I am renting an apartment. The town's tax rate is $35 per thousand of the assessed value. They make it hard to grieve, because they base it subjectively on the "area" in which the home is located, and there is hardly any tax base since there is no employment or industry to speak of, and only a SUNY (public) college which pays no taxes. These taxes are going up because they have to build a water treatment plant now, since they T off the water tunnels going from the Catskills to NYC. But those tunnels are being closed off for repairs. Whoops, there goes our village water supply. So, time to treat the water from the super-polluted river running through the town. Also, the parents want the schools upgraded.
$10,000 on $300,000 house in Brunswick (near Albany), NY. Primegolden is on the money about NY taxes and why, mostly. But teachers have not been laid off and school budgets have not been cut. Class sizes are at record lows upstate as the number of kids keeps declining and the number of teachers doesn't. One HS in the Adirondacks had 1, as in one, kid in the senior class. The reason all the infrastructure is decrepit is that the money that had been set aside, long ago, in sinking funds to repair it was used to pay public employee raises instead.
We're looking at NC where a house like ours would have maybe $1000 - $1500 in property taxes. That's too huge a difference to ignore. And their schools and services are just as good as our if not better.
~$8000/year with various exemption including senior.
Assessed value $369,0000
Actual Market value ~$310,000
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