Nassau's Property Taxes: Second Highest In Nation

Maybe We're Just Not Trying Hard Enough

There we are, Nassau County. Right behind Hunterdon County in New Jersey, boasting the SECOND HIGHEST PROPERTY TAX in America.

Number Two and, from the looks of things, still trying to be number one.

Read the article from Forbes.com. then think about whether we can afford to keep on going in the wrong direction.

On Tuesday, November 6th, Elect Michael Uhl to the Nassau County Legislature, and tell them we need to try harder!
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Who has highest property taxes?

Expensive home prices and steep tax rates combine to put New York and New Jersey residents at the top of the list.
By Matt Woolsey, Forbes.com

America’s priciest property taxes

After navigating a tight credit market and securing a home loan, a big property-tax bill really hurts. And nowhere is it felt more than in New York and New Jersey, where residents pay more in these taxes than anywhere else in the country. The hardest hit? Homeowners in western New Jersey's Hunterdon County.

Last year, the median yearly property-tax bill amounted to a whopping $7,999 here, according to the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan research group in Washington, D.C., which compiled data based on 2006 figures.

Things aren't much better in New York. In Nassau County, Long Island, the median homeowner drops $7,706 a year, while up north, Westchester County residents pay $7,626 a year.

In fact, New York and New Jersey residents can expect to pay up to $6,500 more in yearly property taxes than the national average. The reason: The region's homes are among the priciest in the country, and tax rates there are high as well.

"They spend more on government (in the Northeast)," says Gerald Prante, an economist at the Tax Foundation. "In New York and New Jersey, they're high on every tax."

Elsewhere, it's one or the other, not both. California properties are among the country's most expensive, but property-tax rates there are a third what they are in the Northeast. Property-tax rates in the Midwest and South are comparable to the Northeast, but the homes there are often half as valuable, making the amount paid in taxes significantly less.

Dishing the duty

Many homeowners are paying taxes based on assessments done during the real-estate bubble. Now that it's popped, they're overpaying because assessments have not kept pace with the decline in prices.

In other parts of the country, prices continue to climb. The Virginia Beach and Norfolk areas have seen four straight years of price increases, and homeowners there are finding themselves writing bigger and bigger tax checks.