So, you think your real estate taxes are high? Here’s a chance to stack your property tax rate against the very highest in the country.
Real estate data company Attom recently published an analysis of the U.S. counties that had the highest effective property tax rates in 2022. (The effective tax rate is the percentage of the average estimated market value of homes in each geographic area paid in property tax.)
Attom used estimated home values and local tax assessor data, and considered only counties with populations over 100,000 and at least 10,000 single family homes in 2022.
Read on to see the counties in the country with the highest tax rates. Is yours among them?
9. Rock Island County, Illinois (tie)
Effective property tax rate in this county: 2.14% in 2022
Average annual property tax amount in this county: $3,365 in 2022
Rock Island County has about 142,000 residents, the U.S. Census Bureau says.
The county, established in 1831, is old by U.S. standards. It was named for an island in the Mississippi River.
9. Passaic County, New Jersey (tie)
Effective property tax rate in this county: 2.14% in 2022
Average annual property tax amount in this county: $10,639 in 2022
With nearly 514,000 residents, Passaic County has a 52% rate of owner-occupied homes, according to Census Bureau records.
In Passaic County, life expectancy is about 76 years.
8. Sussex County, New Jersey
Effective property tax rate in this county: 2.17% in 2022
Average annual property tax amount in this county: $8,319 in 2022
The median household income was $101,645 in 2022 in Sussex County, the northenmost county in New Jersey.
Living in the Sussex County city (or borough, as it’s called in New Jersey) of Sussex costs 16% more than the national average, according to Payscale, a site that reports on compensation data.
7. Broome County, New York
Effective property tax rate in this county: 2.19% in 2022
Average annual property tax amount in this county: $3,976 in 2022
If you’ve never heard of a “spiedie,” you’re excused. It’s a Binghamton thing.
That’s as in the city of Binghamton, in New York’s Broome County, where the spiedie sandwich — a hoagie bun filled with grilled marinated meat — is so popular that locals celebrate it with the annual Spiedie Fest.
6. DeKalb County, Illinois
Effective property tax rate in this county: 2.2% in 2022
Average annual property tax amount in this county: $5,768 in 2022
What do DeKalb County taxpayers get for their taxes? Plenty, when it comes to sports and recreation.
The county park district’s facilities include a swimming pool, golf courses, baseball fields and batting cages, a fitness center, gyms, pickleball courts, ice skating, picnic facilities with a barbecue grill, a skatepark, soccer fields, a sledding hill, softball field, tennis court, splash pad, a banquet hall, basketball court, a field house and dog park.
5. Mercer County, New Jersey
Effective property tax rate in this county: 2.24% in 2022
Average annual property tax amount in this county: $9,090 in 2022
We are detecting a theme in these rankings: high property taxes in New Jersey. Five among this list of 10 counties with the nation’s highest property taxes are located in the Garden State.
In fact, personal finance website WalletHub recently concluded that taxpayers in the state of New Jersey pay the highest effective property tax rate in the country, amounting to annual taxes of $6,057 on a home valued at $244,900.
4. Gloucester County, New Jersey
Effective property tax rate in this county: 2.25% in 2022
Average annual property tax amount in this county: $7,352 in 2022
Named for an English city, Gloucester County has a population of about 307,000, according to the Census Bureau. About 80% of its housing units are owner occupied.
3. Camden County, New Jersey
Effective property tax rate in this county: 2.41% in 2022
Average annual property tax amount in this county: $7,206 in 2022
One contribution to high property tax rates in the state of New Jersey is the cost of funding public schools.
New Jersey (which spent $20,670 per pupil in 2020) was one of the five U.S. states spending the most per pupil, according to the Census Bureau.
But the school district in the city of Camden (the county seat) spends the smallest share of its property tax revenue on schools than anywhere else in the state.
2. St. Lawrence County, New York
Effective property tax rate in this county: 2.49% in 2022
Average annual property tax amount in this county: $3,195 in 2022
St. Lawrence County recently took aim at rundown properties by knocking down abandoned homes.
Homes that aren’t maintained and whose owners haven’t paid property tax in more than three years can be torn down by the county. To combat neighborhood blight, the county already has removed 80 commercial properties. In March, it began going after residential properties, too, reports WWNYTV.
1. Monroe County, New York
Effective property tax rate in this county: 2.63% in 2022
Average annual property tax amount in this county: $6,593 in 2022
Monroe County has about 752,000 residents, and roughly 211,000 of them live in Rochester, New York, the county’s largest city.
Rochester’s name and fate is intertwined with that of the Eastman Kodak Company.
Kodak, as the company was known, was founded in 1888 and became famous in the 20th century for products (home movie equipment and color slide film, for example) for amateur photographers, says Encyclopedia Britannica.
Eastman Kodak filed for bankruptcy in 2012 amid a market shift to digital photography.
