Findig effective property tax rate per city
Rental Property Investor · Oakland, CA · Member since 2016 · 268 posts · 106 votes
I am wondering if there is a webpage somewhere that shows the effective tax rate per city in the US. I have tried sites like smartasset.com or googled for the county assessors page to get the rate, but both are really unclear. What I am looking for is the complete tax that has to be payed per year (county + city + state + additional fees etc). Anyone knows of such a page or source?
Thanks @Kyle J. for the info. I see the same here in Oakland, CA where I life. smartasset.com shows a tax rate of 0.866%, but I actually pay 1.37%. That makes quite a difference with the property prices around here.
California has Prop 13, generic national calculations aren't useful here. In general property taxes is a state specific question.
Here is how you do it in California.
520 Montclair Ave, Oakland CA is listed for $1,088,000. And let's pretend you've never heard of the city before, so you have no idea what county it is in. Let's say you're writing an offer at $1.2m.
Google search "CityName CA" to find the county, then google "CountyName Property Taxes."
So "Oakland CA" google search reveals Alameda county because the first line of the wikipedia entry showing up on google's preview is "...largest city and county seat of Alameda County, California..." without having to open the actual wikipedia article. So you google "Alameda County Property Taxes," which brings you to this website for Alameda County. Click "look up secured property tax" and plug in the address. Some counties, you have to plug in the APN because their search feature sucks.
Boom, you get this (looks different for each county):
Ad valorem is 1.3508%, fixed is $980.12. You're writing at $1.2m.
[ $1,200,000 * 1.3508% + $980.12 ] / 12 = $1432.48 per month.
However, parts of Oakland are 1.45%, other parts have fixed at $969, and that's just one city.
If you cross into Piedmont and it'll cost you another $3k/yr:
That fixed portion means you can only ever be so accurate even within a single city if you just want to use a percent. We have overlapping water districts, mosquito districts, school districts, bla bla bla.
Back to that website quoting 0.866%, that's a blended mix of long-time homeowners and new, so rather useless - my grandma who had owned her $1.2m MFR for a million years was paying about 0.2% per year in property taxes (and STILL complained about it...). The random example I picked works out to 1.43%, however that percentage would be higher if the purchase price were lower, due to the fixed special assessments not scaling down with purchase price.
All that being said: If you just want a conservative percentage to use for the Bay Area, use 1.6%. If the deal makes sense at 1.6%, then it'll make sense when you pull the bill and it turns out that it's 1.5%, etc. Outlying rural CA, use 1.25% and be pleasantly surprised when it's 1.1%.
I'm probably going to bookmark this answer so I can refer back to it in the future.
The best way to find the actual property taxes for a particular property is to contact the county tax assessor and inquire about the actual address for the property you're interested in because property taxes vary by county and even by neighborhood. You'll have a base tax rate but then you also have to add in the amount(s) for voter-approved bonds, special/direct assessments, etc.
The websites like smartasset.com, tax-rates.org, etc just provide a rough estimate, and it can be off by a half percent or more. For example, tax-rates.org estimates the property tax rate across California as .74% of assessed value, and says it can be as low as .6%. But in one of the counties I invest in the actual rate is between 1-1.25%, which can make a big difference to your bottom line....especially when considering higher value properties.
Thanks @Kyle J. for the info. I see the same here in Oakland, CA where I life. smartasset.com shows a tax rate of 0.866%, but I actually pay 1.37%. That makes quite a difference with the property prices around here.
If it is for particular property, you can go to the county website, and see the last bill for it online, it will show both the assessed value and the tax due for the current year - giving you the effective rate. Of course some of the items on the bill are not a percentage but a per parcel tax, usually voted by us into the bill.
But you probably already knew all this ;)
Thanks @Kyle J. for the info. I see the same here in Oakland, CA where I life. smartasset.com shows a tax rate of 0.866%, but I actually pay 1.37%. That makes quite a difference with the property prices around here.
California has Prop 13, generic national calculations aren't useful here. In general property taxes is a state specific question.
Here is how you do it in California.
520 Montclair Ave, Oakland CA is listed for $1,088,000. And let's pretend you've never heard of the city before, so you have no idea what county it is in. Let's say you're writing an offer at $1.2m.
Google search "CityName CA" to find the county, then google "CountyName Property Taxes."
So "Oakland CA" google search reveals Alameda county because the first line of the wikipedia entry showing up on google's preview is "...largest city and county seat of Alameda County, California..." without having to open the actual wikipedia article. So you google "Alameda County Property Taxes," which brings you to this website for Alameda County. Click "look up secured property tax" and plug in the address. Some counties, you have to plug in the APN because their search feature sucks.
Boom, you get this (looks different for each county):
Ad valorem is 1.3508%, fixed is $980.12. You're writing at $1.2m.
[ $1,200,000 * 1.3508% + $980.12 ] / 12 = $1432.48 per month.
However, parts of Oakland are 1.45%, other parts have fixed at $969, and that's just one city.
If you cross into Piedmont and it'll cost you another $3k/yr:
That fixed portion means you can only ever be so accurate even within a single city if you just want to use a percent. We have overlapping water districts, mosquito districts, school districts, bla bla bla.
Back to that website quoting 0.866%, that's a blended mix of long-time homeowners and new, so rather useless - my grandma who had owned her $1.2m MFR for a million years was paying about 0.2% per year in property taxes (and STILL complained about it...). The random example I picked works out to 1.43%, however that percentage would be higher if the purchase price were lower, due to the fixed special assessments not scaling down with purchase price.
All that being said: If you just want a conservative percentage to use for the Bay Area, use 1.6%. If the deal makes sense at 1.6%, then it'll make sense when you pull the bill and it turns out that it's 1.5%, etc. Outlying rural CA, use 1.25% and be pleasantly surprised when it's 1.1%.
I'm probably going to bookmark this answer so I can refer back to it in the future.
Haha, thanks @Chris Mason for the detailed answer. Definitely save the URL so you can reuse it later. Also thanks to @Barry B. who had the idea first, but with way less details. It is actually a really good idea, no idea why I did not think of that before. I just look for a property in the area I am interested in and with about the value i want. Then I use this address or the parcel number to look up last years taxes and BOOM, I got my tax rate!
Haha, thanks @Chris Mason for the detailed answer. Definitely save the URL so you can reuse it later. Also thanks to @Barry B. who had the idea first, but with way less details. It is actually a really good idea, no idea why I did not think of that before. I just look for a property in the area I am interested in and with about the value i want. Then I use this address or the parcel number to look up last years taxes and BOOM, I got my tax rate!
Simon, last year's taxes could be very different due to Prop 13, since the property taxes will be based on the NEW purchase price - not the old last year's assessed value, based on whatever year they first bought the property..
On my 4plex in Richmond, it was over 2% of purchase price, due to the fixed assessments. (Of course, it's a lot lower as a % of market value, now that the price has gone up 75%..
Thanks @J. Martin, yes that is of course true. That is why I would try to get the tax rate from another property that is close to the one that I am interested in and that has about the same assessed value as what I would want to pay. That way I should get a fairly accurate rate. Anyways, I only want to get a ballpark rate so I can calculate the projected ROI for a property.
Haha, thanks @Chris Mason for the detailed answer. Definitely save the URL so you can reuse it later. Also thanks to @Barry B. who had the idea first, but with way less details. It is actually a really good idea, no idea why I did not think of that before. I just look for a property in the area I am interested in and with about the value i want. Then I use this address or the parcel number to look up last years taxes and BOOM, I got my tax rate!
It's how we calculate property taxes for DTI purposes, and why we leave wiggle room to account for the homebuyer buying in Piedmont or Berkeley when we preapproved with San Leandro in mind. :)
I assume you got the 1.6% using Piedmont's high property tax ad valorem plus their fixed rate as a percentage of the home values in the area? Say the neighborhood is all million dollar homes and a fixed rate of X, taken as a percentage is Y% which you add to the ad valorem to get the 1.6%. Pick the high end neighborhood and take an average.