What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

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EyeYield
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What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by EyeYield »

9.7% here.
I'm wondering if that's high, low or average in Boglehead Land.

Thanks,

Edit: Primary residence only.
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Kenkat
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by Kenkat »

About 7%
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22twain
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by 22twain »

About 2.5% — 3%.
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ubermax
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by ubermax »

4-5 %
Broken Man 1999
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by Broken Man 1999 »

9.7%, 7%.....OUCH!

1.9% here.

Just scheduled the first installment, due June 30. Our property taxes actually declined this year, a whopping $5.

I'll take it! I'll buy myself a vente red-eye bold coffee at Starbucks. Maybe even two shots of espresso.

At the height of the real estate bubble our property taxes were almost $2700. After the bubble popped we have enjoyed steady decreases, though we are probably at the lowest point we will see since the last tax reduction was only $5.

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TdF fan
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by TdF fan »

About 7-8%
aj44
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by aj44 »

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essbeer
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Post by essbeer »

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Matt62
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by Matt62 »

Based on this years budget,11%. Perhaps a combination of high taxes and small annual budget.
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Jake46
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by Jake46 »

2.6% on home.
stan1
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by stan1 »

Up around 8% for two reasons:
1) We don't have a lot of other expenses (people with a lot of discretionary spending are going to spend a lower percentage on property taxes)
2) Our property tax bill includes Mello-Roos (for those of you not familiar with CA sometimes cities work with developers to issue bonds to pay for construction of roads, schools and other infrastructure in large new developments; repayment of these bonds is done through property tax). Without the Mello Roos it would be down around 4-5%.
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by stan1 »

essbeer wrote:Mine are about 12.5% of expenses. Property taxes in Texas are brutal.
Yep, often forgotten in discussions about states with no income tax.
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reason-logic
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by reason-logic »

Approximately 1.5%
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Post by essbeer »

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Ron
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by Ron »

6% (PA).

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Boglenaut
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by Boglenaut »

About 13%.

It is the one expense we cannot control short of selling the house. It goes up and up, but we can keep other expenses in check.

It is about $4700/yr, but we spend a total of just under $35000/year.
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Watty
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by Watty »

Roughly 1%.

It is only $650 a year since the the property taxes here in Georgia are moderate and we live in one of the few counties that exempts people over 62 from paying school property taxes.

Georgia also has a good retirement income exclusion that was set up just a few years ago so most people that are middle class will not pay any state income taxes once they turn 65.
Saving$
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by Saving$ »

About 1.5%. But that is because most of my annual expenses are income tax related. If I remove all income related taxes and charitable giving from my annual expenses, then the property tax is 5.3%
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Thrifty Femme
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by Thrifty Femme »

15% :? It's the price for a good and diverse school district.
Dandy
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by Dandy »

about 9% - welcome to NJ. :oops:
jucor
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by jucor »

About 4.5%.
nolesrule
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by nolesrule »

Can we define annual expenses for the purpose of this discussion?
Ron Ronnerson
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by Ron Ronnerson »

12% - Bay Area.
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dodecahedron
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by dodecahedron »

25% Upstate NY (Property taxes--about $11K per year on a home assessed roughly at market value of $300K--are by far my largest single expense, other than charitable donations, which I am not including in the denominator for expenses.)
FiveDriver
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by FiveDriver »

We're about 4.5% after South Carolina's Senior Citizen exemption. The Palmetto State also exempts my Pension and Social Security payments.
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by Saving$ »

nolesrule wrote:Can we define annual expenses for the purpose of this discussion?
+1
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by Call_Me_Op »

~ 16%.
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hudson
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by hudson »

4.23%
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mhc
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by mhc »

~1.8%

The easiest way to drop this number is to spend more. :twisted:
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rob
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by rob »

The pct will fluctuate too much with expenses.... I pay @11K in local RE taxes in the NE..... It's not pretty :shock:
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frequentT
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by frequentT »

8.5%

property taxes + mort. interest + med exp. = sizable 1040 deductions
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Chin00k
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by Chin00k »

17% in Northern Virginia
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g$$
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by g$$ »

0.00%. :beer
Longdog
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by Longdog »

Very different answers, depending on what is included in annual expenses. For example, are the following part of annual expenses:

Federal taxes
State taxes
Health, vision, dental insurance premiums (both my share and my employer's share)
Charitable contributions
401k contributions
IRA contributions
Other savings/investments
Steve
harikaried
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by harikaried »

Assuming annual expenses are all things paid other than income-related taxes for that year.

2013: 0.90%
2014: 0.96%

Although in 2013, there was some new furniture and appliances expenses, and 2014 had some remodeling expenses.
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goingup
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by goingup »

5% 2 homes
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Post by essbeer »

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travelerfromsj
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by travelerfromsj »

9.5%- Bay Area.
Grt2bOutdoors
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by Grt2bOutdoors »

essbeer wrote:
SteveM wrote:Very different answers, depending on what is included in annual expenses. For example, are the following part of annual expenses:

Federal taxes
State taxes
Health, vision, dental insurance premiums (both my share and my employer's share)
Charitable contributions
401k contributions
IRA contributions
Other savings/investments
I assumed none of those things were included. I thought it was more asking what was a reasonable amount of property tax relative to your household budget.
^^^That's what I thought the OP was asking. So, in that case, a whopping 30%. :oops: :oops: :oops: Is it any wonder most of my retired neighbors are pulling up stakes and moving outta here?
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rnitz
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by rnitz »

About 8% (in California).

But to be fair, we got to pay about 30% of our annual expenses in State income taxes last year, and about 8% in sales taxes (it was a good income year, but a bad tax year).
Dandy
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by Dandy »

Very different answers, depending on what is included in annual expenses. For example, are the following part of annual expenses:


I guess people aren't reading the title of the post - he wanted the percent of property taxes
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prudent
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by prudent »

Around 5%.
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EyeYield
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by EyeYield »

Ok, I admit the question could've been formulated better. Obviously if I were not single and putting two kids through school, my property taxes would represent about 3% of my total expenses. I'm retired, so I'm not making any contributions and don't have a mortgage.
Perhaps an easier, more narrowly focused, question would be, "what percent of your annual expenses are property taxes - in retirement?"
I was including everything I spend money on, including food, wine, gas, utilities, cable, yard guy, regular vet visits, clothes, household items, tech upgrades, taxes, accountant, healthcare/auto/home/earthquake/umbrella insurance. Even those pesky small repair bills and a two week vacation.
Basically everything except those one time catastrophic events or big time vacations.
In other words, everything you spend money on from Jan. 1st to Dec. 31st.
I spend very little on my other needs and wants, but I'm very frugal.
Property taxes are one of the few things you can't negotiate or comparison shop.
I calculated every dollar I spent in 2012 and withdrew that amount from my brokerage account in January 2013 and that has been my budget every year since. I stretched it to 13 months last year.
For my area, my taxes are low. Average is 0.65% of value, mine are 0.47%
If you live in California, you're familiar with Prop 13, which keeps property taxes low - until you move the second time. For the first move, most can keep their cost basis, possibly from decades ago. Then, as mentioned, there's the Mellow-Roos gotcha.
I live in a a town just north of LA, but would love to live in Encinitas/Carlsbad, where there are a lot of Mellow-Roos properties. The cheaper option is Asheville NC, where I have family and friends and can buy twice the house for half the price.
I'm drifting from my own topic......sorry.
Thanks for your responses so far; very interesting.
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Atomic
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by Atomic »

$2,400/$80,000 = 3.0%
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JDCarpenter
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by JDCarpenter »

One of the beneficial side-affects of moving from IL to TN.

Not yet retired. Presently, right at 1% of all expenses other than Federal income taxes (otherwise, slightly less than 0.5%).

Would have been 11% (ignoring feds) if we hadn't moved (holding all other expenses, including other higher state taxes, constant)
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Sheepdog
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by Sheepdog »

1.5% with senior discount. My expenses do include everything...taxes, charitable giving, entertainment...etc....everything..
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iceport
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by iceport »

About 20%. Is that the highest reported yet? :annoyed

Very modest house on a small lot... wow.
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FrugalInvestor
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by FrugalInvestor »

About 5% on a comfortable retirement home with room for family to visit.
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cheese_breath
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by cheese_breath »

Roughly 6.5%
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William4u
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Re: What Percent Of Your Annual Expenses Are Property Taxes?

Post by William4u »

3% of expenses, and about 1.5% of income.
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