Median Property Tax
The median annual real estate tax bill paid on owner-occupied homes, in dollars.
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The median annual real estate tax bill on owner-occupied homes in a tract, in dollars. It is one of the largest recurring costs of ownership that varies sharply between jurisdictions, and it moves with local rates and assessment practice rather than with the housing market alone.
The Census Bureau collects it at owner-occupied units, and defines the concept broadly: the statistics "refer to the total amount of all real estate taxes on the entire property (land and buildings) payable to all taxing jurisdictions, including special assessments, school taxes, county taxes, and so forth. Real estate taxes include state, local, and all other real estate taxes even if delinquent, unpaid, or paid by someone who is not a member of the household" (ACS Subject Definitions). Taxes due from prior years are excluded, and payments made other than yearly are converted to a yearly basis.
The measure is a dollar amount, not a rate. A high median can mean high tax rates, expensive homes, or both; reading it against home value (Census) separates the two. The tax bill is also one component of the wider monthly owner cost measure, so the two move together.
Metrics in this family#
Median property tax
The current median annual bill, from the most recent ACS 5-year vintage.
Median property tax trend
Change in the median over 3, 5, or 10 years, selectable in the tool. Because the measure is a dollar amount, its trend is reported as a percentage change.
Considerations#
The trend is in nominal dollars, so a change measured across vintages carries general price inflation alongside any real movement in tax bills. Comparisons between tracts within one vintage are unaffected.
The Bureau documents a comparability break: when comparing with earlier years, "some caution should be used when using estimates that include real estate tax data... particularly higher categories and upper quartiles, as there was a change in 2020 to the maximum allowable real estate taxes." Very high bills were capped differently before and after that change.
The universe is owner-occupied units, so a tract's figure says nothing about renters, and the median rests on a small sample wherever owner-occupancy is low.
ACS 5-year estimates describe a five-year period, not a year, so windows shorter than five years compare periods that share years. The Bureau's guidance is "do not compare overlapping datasets" (Comparing ACS Data). The three-year window here is such a comparison: the two vintages share two of their five years. We publish it because it is the only recent-movement view the ACS supports at tract level, and read as a direction it still carries signal. It is not a before-and-after measurement, its movement is damped, and turning points show up late. Where the question is whether something genuinely changed, the five- and ten-year windows compare periods that do not overlap and answer it better.
Assessment and billing cycles differ by state and county, and reassessments arrive in steps rather than smoothly, so a jump in one tract's median may reflect a reassessment year rather than a rate change.
Census tract boundaries were redrawn for the 2020 census. Estimates published on earlier boundaries are carried onto current ones before use — see geography.
Coverage runs through the most recent ACS 5-year release. Publication lags the present, and 5-year estimates are the least current of the ACS products by design.
Every ACS estimate carries a margin of error, published by the Bureau alongside it.
References#
- 1ACS Subject Definitionshttps://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/tech_docs/subject_definitions/2024_ACSSubjectDefinitions.pdf
- 2Comparing ACS Datahttps://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/guidance/comparing-acs-data.html