Property Tax Calculator

Type a home value, pick the state and county, and see the yearly and monthly property tax, the effective rate, how it compares with the state and U.S. average, and what ten years of bills add up to.

Enter the price you paid or expect to pay, choose the state and (once the list loads) the county, and the calculator multiplies the value by that area’s effective property-tax rate — what owners there actually pay as a share of what their homes are worth. If your area taxes only part of market value or gives a homestead exemption, enter those and the estimate uses the taxable value instead. The verdict compares your rate with the U.S. average of 0.98%.

How much is property tax on a $300k house?

At the U.S. average effective rate of 0.98%, property tax on a $300,000 house is about $2,937 a year, or $245 a month in escrow. Where you live changes that figure by a factor of eight: the same house owes roughly $6,693 in New Jersey (2.23%), $6,213 in Illinois, $4,737 in Texas and $810 in Hawaii (0.27%).

Those are state-wide medians. Inside a state the spread is nearly as wide — a $300k house in El Paso County, Texas (2.09%) pays about $6,258 while one in Travis County (1.53%) pays $4,605 — which is why the calculator lets you pick the county. If you already have a monthly payment in mind, remember that tax and insurance commonly add 20–30% on top of principal and interest; the monthly payment by home price tool shows the full PITI figure.

Effective rate vs. mill rate: how a property tax bill is actually computed

Your county does not charge a percentage of what you paid. It charges a mill rate — dollars per $1,000 — on an assessed value that may be a fraction of market value, after subtracting any exemptions. The chain is:

market value × assessment ratio − exemptions = taxable value; taxable value × (total mills ÷ 1,000) = tax.

A worked example in the Texas pattern: a $300,000 house assessed at 100% with a $100,000 school-district homestead exemption and a combined levy of 2.0% from the school district, county, city and college district owes ($300,000 − $100,000) × 2.0% = $4,000, which is 1.33% of market value. In a state that assesses at 35% (Ohio) with 65 mills, the same house owes $300,000 × 0.35 × 0.065 = $6,825 — but Ohio’s rollbacks and reduction factors pull the real bill far below that, which is exactly why the quoted mill rate is a poor way to compare places.

The effective rate cuts through all of it: the tax actually paid divided by the market value. Every rate on this page is an effective rate from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey — the median real-estate tax bill reported by owners (table B25103) divided by the median value they report (B25077), so it already includes exemptions, caps and every overlapping district. Use the assessment-ratio and exemption fields only when you know your own figures are different from the local norm; for a typical owner-occupied house, leaving them at 100% and $0 with the county rate is the better estimate.

Property tax by state, ranked by effective rate

New Jersey, Illinois and Connecticut lead the country; Hawaii, Alabama and Colorado sit at the bottom. The rank order is driven by two things: how much of local government (above all schools) is funded by property rather than income or sales tax, and how high home values are relative to the budgets being raised. Texas and New Hampshire, with no state income tax, land in the top ten; Hawaii and California, with high values and assessment caps, land low even though the dollar bills there are not small.

Read the table two ways. The rate tells you what a given purchase price costs to hold each year; the median bill tells you what owners there actually write cheques for. California is the clearest split: a 0.71% rate looks cheap, but on a $695,400 median home it is a $4,926 bill — more than Texas owners pay at more than twice the rate.

Tax on a $300k, $500k and $750k home in the highest- and lowest-tax states

Multiplying each state’s rate through three common price points shows how fast the gap compounds. A $500,000 house in New Jersey costs about $11,155 a year to hold in property tax — $930 a month, roughly what the principal and interest on a $150,000 mortgage would be. In Hawaii the same price owes $1,350.

What to do with this: when you compare two states or two counties for a move, add the annual tax difference to the mortgage difference before you decide, because the tax does not amortise away — it rises with values for as long as you own. Over 10 years the NJ–Hawaii gap on a $500k house is about $98,050. The relocation calculator runs that comparison with income and housing costs included.

County property-tax rates: where the state average misleads

Counties set their own levies and so do the school districts, cities and special districts inside them, so a state figure hides a wide band. Among counties with at least 100,000 people, the highest effective rates cluster in New Jersey, upstate New York and the Chicago collar counties; the lowest are in Alabama and Hawaii. The calculator’s county list (loaded from the Census data for 3,222 counties) shows each county’s rate next to its name so you can scan a whole state in one dropdown.

In Texas, the big urban counties run from Travis County at 1.53% to El Paso County at 2.09%. Every state and county page under home values — for example Texas or Travis County — carries the local medians the calculator uses, down to the ZIP code.

Assessment caps, homestead exemptions and what happens when you buy

Three mechanisms explain why your neighbour’s bill can be half of yours for the same house.

Assessment caps

• California (Prop 13, 1978): assessed value is the purchase price, rising at most 2% a year, taxed at 1% plus local voter-approved bonds (typically 1.1–1.25% total). A house bought in 1995 may be assessed at a third of its market value. On sale it resets to the new price — budget on the price you pay, not the seller’s old bill.
• Florida (Save Our Homes): homesteaded assessments rise at most 3% a year or the CPI, whichever is lower, with up to $500,000 of the accumulated discount portable to the next Florida homestead. Non-homestead property is capped at 10%. The cap resets when the property changes hands.
• Other caps: Texas limits homestead appraisal growth to 10% a year; Michigan’s taxable value grows by inflation or 5% until a sale “uncaps” it; Oregon and Arizona cap assessed-value growth as well.

Homestead exemptions

Most states take a fixed amount or a percentage off the assessed value of a primary residence. Texas raised its school-district homestead exemption to $100,000 in 2023 and to $140,000 ($200,000 for owners 65+ or disabled) with the November 2025 constitutional amendment; Florida’s is $50,000 (half of it applying to non-school levies); Georgia, Louisiana, Oklahoma and many others use smaller fixed amounts, and most states add larger exemptions or freezes for owners over 65, veterans and the disabled. Exemptions are not automatic — you file once, usually by March or April after you move in.

Reassessment on sale

Because caps and exemptions belong to the previous owner, the bill on a listing sheet is often the lowest number you will ever see for that house. Ask the agent for the uncapped assessment or simply run the purchase price through the calculator at the county rate; in a capped state, expect the first full-year bill to be noticeably higher than the seller’s last one.

How to appeal a property tax assessment

1. Read the notice and the deadline. Assessment notices go out once a year (or every few years in states that reassess on a cycle); the window to protest is usually 30–45 days from the mailing date.
2. Check the record card. Square footage, bedroom count, lot size, condition and finished-basement area are wrong surprisingly often. A factual error is the easiest win.
3. Pull three to five comparable sales from the 6–12 months before the valuation date: same neighbourhood, similar size and age, lower price per square foot. Price-per-square-foot data by ZIP is on the price per square foot page.
4. Compare with neighbours’ assessments (public record): equal houses assessed unequally is a valid argument in most states.
5. File the informal review first — many assessors adjust without a hearing — then the formal board appeal if needed. Bring photos of defects and a one-page summary.
6. Do the math before you hire help. Appeal firms take 25–50% of the first year’s saving. On a $300k house a 10% cut in assessed value at a 1.5% rate saves $450 a year; worth an afternoon, rarely worth a contingency fee.

Winning lowers the assessed value, not the mill rate, so the saving carries forward until the next reassessment — and in a capped state it also lowers the base the cap grows from.

Property tax in your monthly mortgage payment (escrow)

Lenders collect property tax monthly and pay the county for you. The escrow line is simply the annual tax ÷ 12, plus a cushion of up to two months that federal rules allow the servicer to hold. On the $300k example at the U.S. average, that is $245 a month; in New Jersey it is $558. Because the tax is re-estimated every year, the escrow payment moves even on a fixed-rate loan — a reassessment or a levy increase shows up as a higher payment plus a one-time “shortage” catch-up.

Two decisions follow from the number:

• Affordability. Lenders count tax inside the front-end debt ratio, so a high-tax county lowers the price you qualify for. At a 28% housing ratio, every $100 a month of tax removes roughly $17,000 of purchase price at a 6.25% rate. The how much house can I afford by salary tool uses each state’s rate for exactly this.
• Comparing two houses. A cheaper house in a high-tax district can cost more per month than a dearer one next door. Run both through the calculator and add the result to the principal and interest from the mortgage calculator before you offer.

If the tax jump at purchase surprises you, the lender will usually have set the first escrow from the seller’s old bill — ask for it to be based on the purchase price so you are not hit with a shortage in year two.