New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
State property taxes third highest for single-family homes
A new analysis illustrates one challenge facing Connecticut in attracting new residents — local property taxes, with nearly every Connecticut border county having a higher tax rate than neighboring counties in New York, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
Real estate data firm Attom ranked Connecticut as having the third highest property taxes on average in the United States, trailing only Illinois and New Jersey, and with New York ranked fourth.
Attom computed an “effective” annual property tax rate of 1.54% of the value of singlefamily houses in Connecticut, resulting in an average property tax bill of $8,022 annually. That compared to a
0.87% effective tax rate nationally.
“Property taxes took an unusually high turn upward last year, pushing effective rates up, while huge gaps in average tax bills between different parts of country remained in place,” stated Attom CEO Rob Barber, in written comments accompanying the report. “The tax increases were likely connected, at least in part, to inflationary pressures on the cost of operating local governments and schools, along with rising public employee wages and other major expenses.”
Connecticut’s border counties had higher tax rates than adjacent counties in New York, Massachusetts and Rhode Island save for Litchfield County, which at 1.44% was a tick below the rate for neighboring Dutchess County, N.Y.
With an effective tax rate of 1.76%, the Hartford metropolitan region ranked third highest among population centers with at least a million people, after Chicago and Rochester, N.Y., while Phoenix had the lowest effective property tax rate of larger U.S. urban population centers, at 0.38%.
Attom analyzes property tax data at the county level nationally, generating its tax rate by correlating those levies with estimated market values for single-family homes. The two U.S. extremes were New Jersey and West Virginia, which had average annual property taxes of $9,488 and $989, respectively, in 2023.
But specific population centers exceeded New Jersey’s statewide average tax, including Fairfield County where residents paid $11,805 on average to their local cities and towns for property taxes. In the aggregate, Fairfield County’s 200,000-plus home owners paid more than $2.3 billion in property taxes last year.
Still, Fairfield County was the best bargain in Connecticut if correlating taxes against the value of properties, with a 1.31% effective tax rate versus 1.84% in Hartford and New Haven Counties.
While many Connecticut politicians have said higher taxes have a payoff in superior school systems that helps elevate property values, the Connecticut General Assembly has passed measures in past years designed to reduce property taxes by hundreds of dollars for qualifying taxpayers. More are under consideration in this year’s session, including a bill that would provide up to $500 annually in property tax relief for first-time home buyers, in the first five years of ownership; and one that would provide a full exemption to veterans with qualifying disabilities.
Another bill would cap municipal property tax increases at 2% annually or inflation in the consumer price index if lower. The Connecticut Conference of Municipalities argued against the bill last month in testimony to the Connecticut General Assembly’s Planning and Zoning Committee.
“In this inflationary environment, that is crippling to our municipalities and will basically impose budget restraints that we won’t be able to mitigate,” said Brian O’Connor, public policy director for the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, speaking last month in Hartford. “We recognize that property tax reform is necessary, but this is not the way to go.”