Property Tax Rates by County: 2026 Rankings and Analysis

The Shape of US Property Taxes in One Number — Actually, Two

The median US county taxes homeowners at an effective rate of 0.84% of home value, for a median annual bill of $1,547. But almost nobody lives in the median county. The real story of American property taxes is the enormous spread around those numbers: across the 3,132 counties in this dataset, effective rates span from 0.08% (Copper River Census Area, Alaska) to 3.64% (Menominee County, Wisconsin) — a 45-fold difference — and median bills range from under $200 to beyond the $10,000 ceiling the Census survey can even measure.

This analysis ranks every US county using the Census Bureau’s ACS 2023 5-year estimates — the same data behind our county-level property tax pages — and looks at why the rate rankings and the dollar rankings tell two completely different stories.

The Highest Effective Rates: An Upstate New York and New Jersey Story

Of the 15 highest-rate counties in the country, eight are in upstate New York and three are in New Jersey:

Two things stand out. First, the #1 county is an outlier worth a caveat: Menominee County is Wisconsin’s least populous county and is coextensive with the Menominee Indian Reservation; small-county ACS estimates carry wide margins of error. Second — and more structurally — the upstate New York counties pair high rates with low home values. Orleans County taxes at triple the national median rate, yet its median bill ($3,781) is less than half of Camden County’s. High rates in declining-value regions are largely a denominator effect: school and municipal budgets don’t shrink as fast as tax bases, so the rate ratchets up.

New York and New Jersey post the two highest state median rates in the country at 2.17% and 2.20% — but as the next section shows, only one of them dominates the dollar rankings.

The $10,000+ Club: Where the Biggest Checks Get Written

Ranking by dollars instead of rates produces an almost entirely different list — and exposes a limitation of the source data worth being honest about: the Census Bureau top-codes reported property tax bills at $10,000+. At least 15 counties hit that ceiling, meaning their true medians are higher than any public ACS figure can show:

The geography is brutal in its concentration: eight northern New Jersey counties, six downstate New York counties, and exactly one county outside the Northeast — Marin County, across the Golden Gate from San Francisco.

Marin is the list’s most instructive member. Its 0.72% rate is below the national county median — California’s Proposition 13 caps assessed-value growth, keeping rates structurally low. Marin makes the $10,000 club purely on its $1.39 million median home. Manhattan (New York County) works the same way at 0.90%. Meanwhile Passaic County, NJ gets there from the opposite direction: a $439,400 median home but a 2.28% rate. Same five-figure check, completely different machinery — which is why anyone comparing two relocation targets needs both numbers, not a single “highest taxed” headline.

The Other End: 421 Counties Under 0.5%

While the Northeast writes five-figure checks, 421 counties — more than one in eight — have effective rates below 0.5%, overwhelmingly in the South. The five lowest state median rates are Hawaii (0.25%), Alabama (0.33%), Colorado (0.39%), Louisiana (0.41%), and Delaware (0.46%).

The extremes are striking: in Choctaw County, Alabama and Allen Parish, Louisiana, the median homeowner pays roughly $199 per year — about what a Bergen County homeowner pays per week. Alabama’s median county bill is $449/yr; New Jersey’s is $8,804/yr. That’s a 20-fold gap between neighboring rungs of the same federal system, driven by how states fund schools: heavy state-level funding (and income/sales tax reliance) in the South versus locally-funded districts in the Northeast.

Maui County, Hawaii deserves a special mention as the inverse of upstate New York: a near-nation-low 0.17% rate on an $858,600 median home still produces only a $1,442 bill — the rare expensive housing market where the tax bill stays modest.

What This Means If You’re Comparing Places to Live

Three practical takeaways from the full dataset:

1. Always convert the rate to a monthly dollar figure for the specific home price you’re considering. A “low tax” state can cost more than a “high tax” one once home values are applied. Every county page on this site does this calculation automatically, including a monthly escrow estimate.
2. Within metro areas, crossing one county line can move the bill by thousands. Camden County, NJ taxes a median home about $8,063/yr; adjacent Gloucester County, $7,964 — but cross into Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania suburbs and the structure changes entirely. Our county pages list neighboring counties’ rates for exactly this comparison.
3. For retirees and remote workers, the rate matters more over time than the closing price. A 1.5-point rate difference on a $400,000 home is $6,000/yr, every year, rising with assessments — often a bigger long-run number than the closing cost differences between states.

Methodology and Honest Limitations

All figures derive from the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey 2023 5-year estimates: median home value (table B25077) and median real estate taxes paid (B25103). The effective rate is the ratio of the two — the best like-for-like measure of what homeowners actually pay, after assessment ratios and broad-based exemptions, rather than the statutory millage rate.

Limitations to keep in mind:

• Top-coding: the ACS caps reported tax bills at $10,000+, so medians in the most expensive counties are understated; we display them as “$10,000+” rather than implying false precision.
• Small-county noise: counties with a few thousand residents (Menominee WI, much of the Great Plains) have wide margins of error; treat single-county extremes as indicative, not exact.
• Medians, not your bill: your own bill depends on your assessed value, local millage, and exemptions (homestead, senior, veteran). County pages link the relevant assessor’s office.
• Vintage: ACS 5-year data reflects 2019–2023 collections; rapidly appreciating markets may have higher current bills. We refresh this analysis with each annual ACS release.