Property Tax by State 2026: Every State Ranked by Effective Rate

Property tax is one of the largest ongoing costs of homeownership, and it varies more by state than almost any other tax. Two identical $400,000 homes — one in New Jersey, one in Hawaii — can carry an annual tax bill that differs by more than $7,800. We pulled effective property tax rate data for all 50 states plus DC to show exactly where homeowners pay the most and least, and what that means in real dollars.

Notable Findings

• Hawaii has the lowest effective rate in the country at 0.27% — but because Hawaii home values are among the highest in the US, its median-home dollar tax bill isn't the cheapest overall. On a $400,000 home, Hawaii owners pay about $1,080 a year.
• New Jersey is the most expensive state for property tax by a wide margin, at 2.23% effective rate — $8,920 a year on a $400,000 home, more than eight times Hawaii's bill on the identical home.
• The Northeast dominates the high end. New Jersey, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York all sit in the top 5 highest effective rates — a distinct regional cluster driven by heavy reliance on local property tax to fund schools.
• The South and Mountain West dominate the low end. Alabama, South Carolina, Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, Delaware, Idaho, Utah, West Virginia, Tennessee, and Louisiana all post effective rates under 0.6% — several of these states lean more heavily on sales or severance tax revenue instead.
• No state has zero property tax. Even the nine states with no income tax on wages (like Texas, Florida, and Washington) all charge meaningful property tax — Texas, in fact, ranks among the highest at 1.58%, partly to make up for having no state income tax.

Full Rankings: Effective Property Tax Rate by State

Ranked lowest effective rate (best for owners) to highest. Dollar figures show the annual property tax bill on a $400,000 home at each state's effective rate, for apples-to-apples comparison — actual bills depend on your home's assessed value and local millage.

Ranked lowest to highest effective rate. Ties broken alphabetically. Rates rounded to two decimals; dollar figures rounded to the nearest dollar.

Methodology — How We Sourced and Computed This

Why Property Tax Rate Matters More Than the Sticker Price

Buyers often compare home prices across states without factoring in the very different ongoing tax burden that comes with ownership. A $400,000 home in New Jersey effectively costs about $743/month more in property tax alone than the identical home in Hawaii — nearly a full extra mortgage payment at today's rates, every single month, for the life of ownership. Over a 30-year mortgage term, that gap compounds to well over $200,000 in total tax paid.

This is also why "cheap" states on paper can surprise buyers. Texas and New Hampshire have no state income tax, but both rank in the top 10 highest property tax states — the revenue has to come from somewhere. Meanwhile, states like Alabama and Colorado combine low property tax with reasonable home prices, which is part of why they consistently rank well in overall cost-of-homeownership studies.