Tax Bills Climbed as Home Values Slipped. Sellers Pay Twice.

Your property tax bill went up last year. Your home's value, on average, went down. Per ATTOM's annual property tax analysis, released April 9, 2026 and covering full-year 2025, the average single-family home paid $4,427 in taxes, up 3 percent, while the average estimated value of that home fell 1.7 percent to $494,231. The bill and the asset moved in opposite directions. That divergence, not the average bill, is the number worth remembering.

The levy sets the bill, not your value

When the levy rises and values drop, the effective rate has to climb. It did. ATTOM puts the 2025 national effective rate at 0.9 percent, up from 0.86 percent in 2024 and the highest since 2020, when it sat at 1.1 percent. In aggregate, $396.8 billion in property taxes hit 89.6 million single-family homes in 2025, up 3.7 percent from the prior year.

This is an annual print, published in April 2026 and describing last year, so it is not a real-time read. But the mechanism it exposes does not expire. Local budgets set the levy first. Your assessed value only divides that levy among taxpayers. When values soften, the rate rises to collect the same or larger pot. The tax has decoupled from the price of the asset it is attached to, which means a falling market does not protect you from a rising bill.

Buyers underwrite your tax line

A sticky tax bill is not just a carrying cost. It is a number the buyer's lender underwrites against. Buyers qualify on the monthly payment, and that payment bundles principal, interest, taxes, and insurance. Every extra $1,200 a year in property tax is roughly $100 a month, and that $100 comes straight out of the price a payment-constrained buyer can bid. In a high-tax market, your escrow line quietly caps your sale price before the first showing.

The geography makes this concrete. ATTOM's highest 2025 average bills cluster in the Northeast: New Jersey at $10,499, Connecticut at $8,901, New Hampshire at $8,174, Massachusetts at $7,904, and New York at $7,732. The lightest sit in the South and Mountain West, with West Virginia at $1,081 and Alabama at $1,284, and the lowest effective rates in Hawaii at 0.33 percent, Idaho at 0.39 percent, Wyoming at 0.4 percent, and Arizona at 0.43 percent. A seller in Binghamton, New York, where ATTOM clocks the highest metro effective rate at 2.27 percent for 2025, asks buyers to absorb a tax burden many multiples of what the same buyer carries in Phoenix. Same list price, smaller qualified pool.

A stale assessment is money on the table

If the effective rate rose because values fell, many assessments are now high relative to the market. That is an appeal opportunity, and it is worth more at sale than it looks. A lower assessed value cuts the tax line in your listing, which widens the pool of buyers who qualify at your price. Appeal windows are short, often 30 to 60 days from the assessment notice, and the evidence is comparable sales. If your market cooled in 2025, our monthly city market reports can show whether recent comps already support a reduction, and our homeowner guides cover how to build the case.

None of this argues that values are broadly falling now. Our own ZIP-level tracking, covering more than 26,000 markets in the national housing report, puts the typical US home near $291,471 in June 2026, up 3 percent over the year. The point is narrower: the tax bill is no longer a proxy for what your house is worth, and in high-tax states it is actively shrinking what buyers can pay for it.

Check the appeal window before the listing photos

If a sale is anywhere on your horizon, pull the assessment notice first. Compare the assessed value against 2025 closed comps. If the comps come in lower, file the appeal, because the deadline will close long before your listing does, and a trimmed tax line is one of the few price levers a seller fully controls.