Tax bills rose 3% in 2025 while home values fell.

In 2025, the average single-family tax bill rose 3 percent while the average home value fell 1.7 percent. Your carrying cost went up as your asset went down, and that asymmetry is the single most important thing the newest tax data tells a would-be seller.

The 2025 numbers: bills up, values down

The hard read comes from ATTOM, released April 9, 2026, covering tax year 2025. Governments levied $396.8 billion in property taxes on more than 89.6 million single-family homes in 2025, up 3.7 percent from 2024. The average home, valued at $494,231, generated a $4,427 bill, up 3 percent year over year. The effective rate climbed to 0.9 percent from 0.86 percent in 2024, the highest since 2020.

The mechanism is arithmetic, not politics. The national average single-family value fell 1.7 percent year over year in 2025 while levies rose. A rising numerator over a shrinking denominator pushes the effective rate up without a single ballot measure passing. ATTOM's CEO put it plainly: higher bills combined with declining values drove the rate increase.

A ratchet, not a mirror

Homeowners tend to assume the tax bill tracks the market. It does not. It ratchets. When values climb, assessments follow and bills rise. When values fall, local budgets still need the same revenue, so levies hold or grow and the effective rate rises to compensate. The 2025 data is the cleanest demonstration in years: a value decline produced a higher tax burden, not a lower one.

The practical consequence: waiting out a soft market does not pause your carrying cost. It can raise that cost as a share of what the house is actually worth.

The tax line trims your buyer pool before the first showing

Property tax is not just your expense until closing. It sits inside every mortgage buyer's qualifying payment. Lenders underwrite principal, interest, taxes, and insurance as one number, so a higher tax component directly reduces the price a qualified buyer can offer, even when nothing about the house changed.

Geography decides how much this matters. In tax year 2025, the Northeast carried the highest average bills: New Jersey at $10,499, Connecticut at $8,901, New Hampshire at $8,174, Massachusetts at $7,904, and New York at $7,732. New Jersey's average bill ran nearly ten times West Virginia's $1,081. A $10,000 annual bill consumes roughly $830 a month of a buyer's qualifying budget before a dollar reaches your list price. On rates, ATTOM's state-level breakdown for 2025 shows Illinois highest at 1.84 percent, followed by New Jersey (1.58 percent), Vermont (1.40 percent), Connecticut (1.36 percent), and Ohio (1.32 percent). Hawaii sat lowest at 0.33 percent, with Idaho, Wyoming, Arizona, and Alabama all at or below 0.43 percent.

Sellers in the top-five rate states are ceding buyer capacity at every price point. That is leverage lost before negotiations begin, and it should factor into how you set an asking price. Our pricing and tax guides walk through how to translate a local tax bill into a payment-based price ceiling.

The assessment lag now cuts against owners

There is a timing trap inside the 2025 figures. Assessments lag the market, so 2025 bills reflected earlier, higher values even as current values dipped. Values have since recovered: our June 2026 index puts the typical US home near $291,471, up 3.0 percent from a year earlier across the 26,274 ZIP-level markets we follow, detailed in our national housing market report. When assessors catch up to that rebound, the 2026 and 2027 bills reset higher off the new values.

The net effect is a one-way door. The tax relief a value dip should have delivered never arrived, and the next round of assessments will capture the recovery. Owners in high-rate states can track how their metro is repricing in our monthly city market reports before the assessor does.

Beat the assessor to the decision

If a sale is on your two-year horizon and you sit in a high-tax state, the 2025 data argues for moving before the next assessment cycle bakes in the June 2026 recovery. And regardless of timing, the 3 percent bill increase on a 1.7 percent value decline is a standing case for appealing your assessment: the numbers show the two figures are no longer moving together, and the burden of proving they should is now on the county, not on you.