Definition
Effective property tax rate is calculated as annual property tax amount divided by estimated market value. In plain terms, it estimates how much property tax appears in the record data for each dollar of estimated home value. A 1.00% effective rate means the median annual tax amount is about one percent of the median estimated market value for the records included in that geography.
The metric is useful for comparing relative property-tax pressure across states, counties, and cities, but it is not an official millage rate, levy rate, statutory tax rate, tax-district rate, or countywide parcel total. It is a property-record-derived rollup built from AssessorSearch coverage.
Record population
The effective-rate rollups are residential-oriented. Included records are categorized as single-family homes, condos, townhouses, or multi-family properties, and must have both a positive annual tax amount and a positive estimated market value. Vacant land, commercial property, other non-residential land-use categories, zero-dollar tax records, missing tax records, zero or missing estimated values, and records outside the effective-rate anomaly bounds are excluded from the effective-rate metric.
State rows are recomputed from AssessorSearch list-builder records. County and city rows come from production property-record rollup tables used by AssessorSearch. The county map uses a light 100-record display floor to avoid one-record artifacts while still showing broad county coverage. The ranked preview tables use the stricter public rank columns from the CSV, which are populated when a geography has at least 10,000 usable effective-rate records.
Census and ACS tables are useful when a story needs a government survey benchmark for households or housing units. This AssessorSearch release is different: it is built from property record tax amounts and estimated values, then published with county and city CSVs so local reporters can inspect the rows behind a ranking. Use the source that matches the question, and do not mix the two definitions without noting the difference.
Bounds and interpretation
Effective-rate records are bounded to 0.10% through 5.00% before median rates are calculated. That range is meant to reduce the effect of obvious source anomalies, such as records where the tax amount or value field is present but not comparable to normal residential property records.
The effective-rate table and the median annual tax-bill table answer different questions. A county can have a high effective rate because taxes are high relative to home values. Another county can have a lower effective rate but a higher median tax bill because home values are much higher. For local decisions, individual bills still depend on assessed value, exemptions, school and special districts, reassessment timing, and local levy rules.
Source date and use
The source data date for this release is 2026-06-10. The CSV export date is 2026-06-18. Use this dataset for research, reporting, and comparison of aggregate property-record patterns. Use official county tax, assessor, or treasurer sources for legal, payment, appeal, valuation, or parcel-specific tax decisions.
This release is not a year-over-year change file. It should be cited for current effective-rate and median-bill comparisons, not for annual tax increases or decreases unless the reporter combines it with a separate historical source and labels that source.
