Property Taxes: the Silent Killer

If you own property, you probably pay property tax of some kind.  They're unavoidable, and uncontrollable. As such, property tax is one of the most important line items to consider in the overhead expenses of property ownership.  

In recently reviewing my properties' tax burden I noticed a large gap in relative tax burden despite all three properties being in the same city and county, and having similar values.  I had assumed taxes were assessed equally.  Not so. 

Without going into the convoluted Oregon tax law (but if you want a nice little summary, go here), the bottom line is that there is wide disparity between the relative tax burden placed on individual properties. 

Live and learn. 

Fortunately, since people hate taxes and tax information is easily available to the public, numerous online resources are available. 

A quick look at this excellent tax map provided by taxfoundation.org provides a quick and easy look at tax burdens across the country.  Of course, this isn't the whole story, but an example of the type of information that a little digging can yield. 

In the future, I won't just be looking at the tax burden as a part of my overhead costs, but using tax burden as a criteria in selecting markets and properties to minimize my property taxes.