It depends on the school district in my county, in the midwest. My house has a tax value of $234k and we have a $4200 tax bill this year and every year it goes up. The school district is growing, but my friend, in the same county different school district has a house at $350k and his bill is only $3500.00

The tax system in New York is so strange, my house was built in 1957 and my taxes are based on that year's value. My house is assessed at $11,000 and that's what it sold for in 1957. My actual taxes are a formula based on the assessed vse and come to approx $4600 a year. It's a small home in a middle-class neighborhood. Not million dollar homes.

Greater Seattle Area:

It depends on the suburb/locality. It seems to range from about 0.8% to 1.2% of assessed value. And the assessed value seems to be about 80% of market value.

One more thing...
Average house here is about $400K market value. I sold a house 2 years ago for $710K (that probably has a market value now of $850K); it's assessed value this year is $640K and the taxes are $4800. I bought another house a few miles away that had a little higher market value, and my taxes almost doubled ($9000): same assessor's office, but different locality.

A friend's house in another part of town has an assessed value of $420K and his taxes are $4000.

Assessed value $232,260. Tax $5,043. 2.171%

Huge depending upon where you live. Dadoes pays some tall taxes, but is it 100% assessment? 1% would be a nice standard however in states like Florida the locals get the homestead
exemption and the snowbirds fill in the remainder. In AZ, they pay us not to put in a lawn in Navajo County, among other incentives. Probably why teachers retire there.

Just sold our house in NJ a few months back for $460K. Assessed at $328,000 and taxes were $8500. Drove us right out after a lifetime there.

appraised value 700k. taxes 1k.

We don't tell the neighbours because we don't want them to use our example to get their taxes down. I don't know why they are so low. It is probably a mistake, but we don't ask. They are 25% lower than when we bought 25 years ago.

We're 30 miles north of Chicago in Lake County, which assesses annually. We moved here five years ago from another suburb in Cook County, which assesses every three years. We find Lake to be more fairly run, so far. We had to protest our assessment every three years in Cook -- and won, because the assessments were very inconsistent as well as subject to political clout. It was sad to check the assessment rolls and find a lot of poor folks who were being taken to the cleaners because they didn't realize they were over-assessed (seemingly to make up for the political under-assessments).

Both communities have excellent schools, which is where the bulk of our RE taxes go. I'd say we get more "bang for our buck" in city services in our present home.

Taxes are less than 1% of MARKET value in both cases. Both communities now have transfer taxes to help support them. (Tax levied by the city/village when you sell your home.) There are a couple of towns not far from us that have zero taxes for city services because they are home to many auto dealerships and mega-box stores.

California's schools suffer because of their RE tax cap. People will remodel and add on rather than move and lose an artificially low assessment that may date back to a 20-year-old sale price on a property. It's not always a good thing to have low RE taxes!

100% assessment in our community, too. And believe me, there was a HUGE hue and cry raised by those with ocean front homes, lol! We fork over about $2700/yr.. Our community was reassessed a few years ago and since our home is not "finished" I disputed the value placed on it for tax purposes.

We own a very modest home in a "ritzy" neighborhood and values have skyrocketed in the past 10 years. I was "johnny on the spot" about contesting the new assessment. Maine is the highest taxes state in the country. There is GULF between the wealthy (desireable) counties to the south and those to the very north.

School funding is becoming the "issue du jour" in my state. And it's what drives increases in property taxes statewide. More rural, impoverished counties struggle to fund their schools at the same time their tax base can no longer bear the burden.

Huge issue for my state, even as the speculative real estate market has exploded courtesy of affluent, OUT OF STATE, investors.

looks like 1% seems to be common. our county has all property info available online. you can check all parcels for sale info, assessed value, taxes, lot size. pretty interesting.

The school portion of my $5043 tax is more than $3000. Quite painful when I don't have any children in school. There's a $15K homestead exemption applied to the valuation for the school portion. Assessment is supposed to be "market value." I paid $245K two years ago. There's a 10% cap (I think) on increases per year but that doesn't apply during the year of purchase. 2004 (year the construction was finished), valuation was $112,160. Then after my purchase in 2005 (I'm not the builder / original owner), it went up to $221,090. That's a 97% increase. Now $232,260 for 2006. It'll take another leap for 2007.

Assessments/valuations are soured by politics and "who you are." My county has all the data online. It's interesting to look up some of the "big names" in town and see valuations on bigger/better properties that are lower than mine.

12k, ouch!!!

We just sold a house in SoCal. Taxes there are based on 1% of the latest sales price and are limited to a 2% increase each year. The people who bought that house will pay over twice what we paid in taxes.

We just bought a house in Oregon. Purchase price $300k, taxes will be about $3500 for this year. I believe the maximum it can go up is 3% per year and I've heard that the taxes actually go down some years. I'll believe that when I see it.
---------------
In my opinion, the crummy schools in California are due to poor management and the overly-strong unions, not the lack of tax revenue. Schools in California are protected by state law so much so that all other social services can suffer in bad revenue periods but the amount of money the schools get is guaranteed to go up.

The school portion of my $5043 tax is more than $3000. Quite painful when I don't have any children in school.

Putting aside the question of whether educational funds are being spent wisely, even people without children in school should help fund public schools, because good school districts have a positive effect on the prices of properties in that school district. A properly-educated population contributes to a stable progressive society, enjoys less crime, and offers a higher standard of living for everyone.

Oh, and I would contribute property-tax info, but I live in the Twin Cities like joe_mn, so it's no different for me. :-)

"The school portion of my $5043 tax is more than $3000. Quite painful when I don't have any children in school."

And, to add to the reply above mine, don't you want a educated generation coming up to fund YOUR Social Security?

I offer this thought with respect to funding education: Look at the salaries of ADMINISTRATORS compared to those of teachers. Look at the medical benefits the whole lot of them receive...

I know there is NO WAY I could ever afford the sort of health care package they receive, one that requires NO participation on their part... one whose price tag has skyrocketed in the years we've lived in our home.

And I see very little in the way of "accountability" or merit-based pay increases... unions don't like that idea much, at all (how do you "quantify" it?). And we STILL have kids who are promoted to middle school with reading and arithmetic skills insufficient to do the work.

SAD consolidation is a huge issue in my state right now. And it's the unions that are screaming the loudest. And still the kids are struggling with the "3 Rs"; most notably in more impoverished northern counties.

About 2-2.25% in my suburb of cook county. Where the median teacher's income at the high school is 100k....

Rural home on 4 acres in Nebraska. House and Morton building 10 years old. Assessed valuation is $186,050. Taxes are $3085.

And I see very little in the way of "accountability" or merit-based pay increases... unions don't like that idea much, at all (how do you "quantify" it?). And we STILL have kids who are promoted to middle school with reading and arithmetic skills insufficient to do the work.

That's why I left out of the equation whether the money that was collected was being spent efficiently. What I saw in dadeoes' post was not a complaint that the money was being spent poorly, but that it was spent at all because dadoes perceives no value to the education without kids in school.

Education, without question, is an area which really demands some examination (and I say this as someone whose father was a unionized teacher). We have allowed layer upon layer of bureaucracy to cover our educators, we have expected teachers to take on more of the mantle that parents used to carry, and we have not demanded accountability for the final product.

But that's another thread. :-)

Trust me, it IS being spent poorly. There was a ruckus several years ago about the superintendent being given a Suburban and the board tried to hide it. A bond passed last year for construction of a new middle school. The district already owned sufficient land, but the 'big names' in town didn't want a school there, so another plot was bought that needs a lot of dirt-work to preclude potential flooding, AND a new access road built. They keep adding more things to the construction plans, with funds supposedly "found," instead of using the "bonus" funds to pay for what is already on the design.

I graduated high school 25 years ago. The school district in which I was educated is operating with a facility that was built well before I entered it in 4th grade when the Catholic school shut down (my grandfather was on the school board during construction/dedication of part of it).

The drive nowadays is for new FLASHY facilities to show-up football rivals and neighboring districts. If they'd spend the money on TEACHING the kids, instead of new football fields with Astroturf and greasing administrators with gifts, I wouldn't be so miffed.

As one without children, I understand completely the frustration of tax increases that are largely to fund school related expenses. And my (many) child-free friends feel the same way. Rarely does the electorate EVER say, "NO!" to the school system... not politically correct. But when I see a brand new fleet of full size buses and they have 8-10 kids on them with diesel running about $2.75/gallon I am irritated.

I'm all for adequate funding... but I'm really tired of being told the questions I raise indicate I "don't care about kids...", etc.. I understand how dadoes feels. Completely!

I should have been more clear --

The school district in which I was educated (*not the city in which I live now*) is *still* operating *today* with a facility that was built well before I entered it ...

They've added some buildings, made improvements, but the main structure is the same.

Merciful goodness! I'm not sure what the tax 'rate' is here, but the taxes I pay for my modest 17 year old home on 40 acres seems quite a value in comparison to taxes on properties across the country.

Sue

Believe it or not, our property tax rate is nearly 18%!

Fortunately, the rates are based on what the house would have cost to build in the 1950s. I think the county tax apprasisal on our house is 27K, which is less than 1/10 of what we paid for it 2 yrs ago, so we're actually paying about 1.4%. The actual millage hasn't changed in decades. If we lived just 3 miles over in the next county, our taxes would increase over 25% and the property reassessed every 3-4 yrs.

it does depend on where you are located and how you are zoned.

my house is assessed at about 150k. tax this year was 975.00. i am in the county so i only have school and county tax.

my parents house, 1 mile away from me, is assessed at 168k and their tax was 1900.00 this year. they are in the city so taht adds city tax to the county tax.

our business in the same town the tax was about 3800.00, BUT the assesed value was higher. even though we are located in a prime area for some reason the taxes are lower.

our other office in another town went thru a county wide reassessment this year. last year's tax was total of 2200.00. this year, it was over 8000.00!

12k on a million dollar home is nothing. I have friends in Westchester NY whose taxes are about that and their house isn't anywhere near a million. Even after the price increases of late.

"Public" school is public because everyone funds it, not just parents. Otherwise, it'd be private school.

Most school district waste huge sums of money on bullsh** and then blame teachers for higher taxes and ignorant kids. When in reality the taxes are squandered and the kids are ignorant because (1) that's the culture in America. It's not cool to be smart or to do well in school. Add to that (2) the pernicious effects of Education School--new theories on education every few years revamping the curriculum w/ the 'latest and greatest' techniques (they changed theories when I was entering high school, so I never had Algebra) and you have a disaster. Want to improve kids' learning? Fire the administrators!

Oh, I almost forgot (3) the prevalence of standardized tests, and the skewing of education toward teaching how to take standardized tests well. Has education in this country gotten better since the advent of the SAT? I'd say not. In the days of the one-room schoolhouse, at least kids learned to read and do math.

/rant.

Our property tax is 1%, which comes to about $6000 a year (on a $580k house). I live in Southern California.

We have 100% valuation. We pay about $3500.00 on our home. If memory serves me it is assessed at $432,000 with exemptions. In our state it is the law that whenever the assesments ? (I'm not sure if that is the correct term) is below 70% the town assessor must conduct a re-evaluation. That is what happened to our town a few years ago. We hadn't had re-evaluation in over 10 years. Many people were very upset at our town assessor but he was doing what he had to do. The people who had homes with a water view/beach front were hit the hardest. That is where people want to live the most and are willing to pay the outrageous asking prices of homes for sale...driving up surrounding home valuations.
In our town 69.35% of our taxes goes to the schools. Being a 12 year volunteer in our schools, elementary through high school, I don't have a problem at all with how the money is spent. I see it being used wisely every week. We again this year adheard to our local citizens "tax task force" and came in at 4.7% increase. Our superintendent is not the highest paid in our surrounding area. He comes in around the middle of the pack. We recently receieved the SAT scores for our 11th graders. (A mandory assesment thanks to Mr. Bush's-No child left behind crap). The kids scored in the top 10% of the state and locally the kids came out on top. So I respectfully disagree with people who say schools are wasting money and not getting good results. That just isn't so. NancyLouise

Also about 1% here in an unincoporated (no city taxes) area of Southern IN.

Chisue--wow! I found it interesting what you are paying in Lake County. My parents left an unincorporated area of Lake County, IL a 2 years ago because the taxes were so high. They were paying about 3% a year--house and extra lot were valued at about 350,000--they were paying around 9,000 a year--way too much when you're close to retirement age.

I recently looked up the taxes on our old house in Kane County, (about 35 miles from Chicago) IL They were about 2.5% when we moved and are still about 2.5-3%. (one of the reasons we also made the decision to move)

Milwaukee suburb. Reassessed in 2006 for $361,000, and that is a pretty accurate fair market value estimate. Tax $5764, or 1.6% of that market value. Seems too much.

Property taxes in California are supposed to be capped at 1.3%
of assessed value at time of purchase. However, various areas and municipalities have added "Mello-Roos" (sp?) special assessments, so taxes can actually be higher than that. A few counties will let you take your basis with you when you move. In most cases, though, when you purchase a home, the assessment of purchase price establishes your tax basis. Some areas only tax at about 1%, but they are few. Property values are so high that 1.3% ends up being a lot of money. I do not know if there is a cap on how much Mello-Roos taxes can go up, but a friend told me his effective tax rate was 1.5%.

Long Island: paying around $9,000 on a $550,000 modest house. Almost $6,000 of those taxes are school taxes. We live in an "excellent" school district, but we don't have children.

I don't object to the other taxes, which pay for our police, firemen, sanitation, etc.

Does it annoy those who don't have children to pay large school taxes? I know this will bring negative comments back to me, but I'm just curious.

"Does it annoy those who don't have children to pay large school taxes?"

Nope!
People paid to put my kids through school, and now we pay to educate others. I'd rather have kids in school and educated than any alternative.

My taxes are ~$2K school and

"Does it annoy those who don't have children to pay large school taxes?"
Nope!
People paid to put my kids through school,

Actually, people paid to put ME through school!

My kids are in private schools, so I'm paying to put them through (oops, no, forgot, this year DD is in public).

But I have never minded the *concept* of paying for public education, bcs someone did it for me. Lots of someone's who had no children, even.

And bcs as Steve & others point out, I benefit from a well-educated populace. In many ways.

And I also live in NYC, where we waste--er, spend--$12,000 per pupil. THAT annoys me. I'm happy to pay--thrilled to pay, in fact.

But I want the kids in my city to get a decent education, and I don't want to be fleeced.

"Fire the administrators"--maybe (in NYC, it's "fire the janitors"). But a GOOD administrator will *make* a school. I know this, from having seen mediocre administrators, and mediocre and good bosses.

The problem is, it's hard to find, and hard to BE, a good administrator.

The states that I'm familiar with Vermont, New Hampshire and Florida all average somewhere around 2% of value. FL and VT stay very close to the fair market value with reappraisals every few years.
In Florida if you have residency (homestaed exemptions) your tax increases are limited to I think 3% per year. I know a woman with a one bedroom condo valued at about $95,000. She has been in it for 20+ yrs...probably paid $15,000 or $20,000 for it. Her taxes are $125 per year.
Now New Hampshire taxes may sound expensive to some of you people at 2%, but...............no state income tax and no sales tax. Try to find that anywhere else! Wonder why their state motto is "Live Free or Die" You don't see a whole lot of money wasted in that place. Where most state legislators get $500-$1,200 per week while in session, NH pays $125 for a 2 year term....$62.50 per year. Guess we could learn something there.

There are many of us who are paying social security who will NEVER see the benefit of it ourselves but have no choice weather or not to pay it. I'm sure I could use that money to invest with much greater return myself.

Morris County NJ. Bought the house in 2000 for 275K. It's on a lake . Back then it was about 1500sqft 2 bed/ 2 bath 2 fireplaces . Large rooms, very nice space on about 3/4 of an acre.
Renovated 2 years ago we added a 2nd level. It's now just over 3K sqft with a total of 4 full bathrooms ,3 bedrooms upstairs ,an office ( or bedroom ) and a playroom ( also could be a bedroom , has it's own bathroom)
So you could say 6 bedrooms if necessary.
If we sold today on a good day we'd get 850K maybe more maybe a bit less.
TAXES FOR 2007 ............. $14,500 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I cry 4 times a year when my taxes are due.

Talley Sue: We pay almost $21,000 per pupil. I think that's highway robbery.

In the same boat as rrah--also in southern Indiana.

We are in town (Bedford) in an old home and just went through reassessment a few years ago. We're still well under $1K.

Is it no wonder I love it here? LOL

Jefferson Co., WA state. Taxes are $2710 which is 1% of assessed value.

"Does it annoy those who don't have children to pay large school taxes?"

Of course not. I was educated in public schools paid for by others. I had children in public schools and now have grandchildren in the public schools. Besides, good public schools help keep property values up.

NJ House is appraised for $149,000 and we pay $6500/year in taxes.

Every year it has been going up $500-$600 or so. ouch.

We pay $3200/year with a homestead credit (about $150) on a house assessed at $190k and appraised at $179k. We live in Eastern Iowa.