What are property taxes in your ZIP code?

Property taxes in the United States are set at the local level — by counties, municipalities, school districts, and special districts. Because these jurisdictions do not align with ZIP code boundaries, two homes in the same ZIP code can belong to different school districts and face dramatically different tax rates. ZIP-code-level data captures this variation in a way that state or county averages simply cannot.

For homebuyers, this granularity matters enormously. Even within a single county, neighboring ZIP codes can have annual property tax bills that differ by $3,000 or more on identically priced homes — a gap of $250 per month in housing cost. County-level averages blend these differences away, masking real affordability distinctions that only appear at the neighborhood level.

The effective tax rate shown on this site is calculated by dividing the median annual property tax paid by the median home value for each ZIP code. This derived metric normalizes for home price differences and lets you compare the relative tax burden across any two ZIP codes in the country, from the highest-tax corridors of New Jersey to the lowest-rate rural areas of Alabama and Hawaii.