Property Tax Estimator

Assessed value and market value are not the same thing, and the gap between them trips up a lot of first-time buyers. County assessors typically value homes at some fraction of what they'd sell for, often reassessing every one to three years depending on the state, so your tax bill can lag behind a hot housing market by a year or more. States like California cap annual assessment increases under Proposition 13 at 2%, while others reassess at full market value every cycle, which means two identical houses in different counties can carry wildly different tax burdens.

Lenders usually fold your estimated annual tax into a monthly escrow payment alongside your mortgage principal and interest, collecting one-twelfth of the yearly bill each month so there's no surprise lump sum due at tax time. Running the numbers here before you make an offer on a house keeps that escrow estimate from blindsiding you at closing, especially in areas where millage rates shift after a school bond passes or a municipal budget vote.

Drop in your home's assessed value and the combined mill rate for your county, city, and school district, since most places stack several levies on top of each other rather than charging one flat rate. The calculator multiplies assessed value by the total rate, then divides by twelve so you can see both the annual total and what it adds to your monthly housing cost.

Nothing you type here leaves your device. The math runs in your browser's own JavaScript engine, so your home value and tax estimates never touch a server, a database, or an analytics pipeline, which matters given how specific real estate figures can be.