Property Taxes: Let’s Take a Close Look
We talk about property taxes a lot with clients. Usually when we're looking at houses, we'll pull up the tax bill and compare it to similar houses we’re touring together. And sometimes the difference is pretty amazing.
Most people assume taxes are cheaper in Washington and Clackamas County than they are in Multnomah County.
They're generally right. But it's not nearly that simple.
The age of the house matters a lot. So does the price. And every once in a while, you'll find a house in Multnomah County with a ridiculously low tax bill. For example, we have a rental house in NE and property taxes are under $3k and a rental in beaverton at a similar value and the taxes are $7k.
So we decided to pull some data and see how big the difference really is.
We looked at three groups:
$500,000 homes
$1 million homes built before 2000
$1 million homes built in 2000 or later
To keep things reasonably apples-to-apples, we looked at detached homes sold over the past year on less than 0.5 acres.
The first thing that jumped out at me was how little the difference matters for a lot of price points.
For a $500,000 house, Washington and Clackamas County taxes were about 11–13% lower than Multnomah County. That sounds meaningful until you turn it into dollars. We're talking about roughly $50 a month.
For most people, that's not going to determine whether they live in Portland or Beaverton or West Linn. Location to work, family, schools, parks, and whether you like the neighborhood are probably going to win that argument.
The same is mostly true for older houses at higher price points.
For $1 million homes built before 2000, the average Multnomah County tax bill was around $12,000. In Washington and Clackamas, it was closer to $10,000.
That's a $170/month difference.
Again, meaningful. But probably not enough to make a decision about where to live.
And this is where it gets interesting.
Newer $1 million homes are a different story. Multnomah County's average tax bill was about 40% higher than Washington and Clackamas.
But it's not just the average. The range can be much wider, too.
The highest tax bill we found in Washington/Clackamas was about $14,000. In Multnomah County, it was $28,000.
That's worth thinking about for a lot of our clients.
We also found a $1 million home in Multnomah County with a tax bill of just $2,500.
Which brings us back to the thing we tell clients all the time: yes, on average, taxes are higher in Multnomah - but it really depends and it’s probably a smaller difference than you’d expect.
Here's the data. Enjoy.
