States with no property tax

None of the fifty, and the reason is the useful part

No state has no property tax. Not one, and not nearly. If you came here hoping for a list, the honest answer is that there is no list — and the pages that hand you one are quietly answering a different question, which is where the rate is lowest.

The reason is structural rather than political. Property tax is not a state tax. It is levied by counties, municipalities, school districts, fire districts and water districts — thousands of separate authorities, each setting its own rate on its own budget. A state legislature cannot abolish a tax it does not collect, and where states have intervened they have capped or exempted rather than removed.

And what it pays for is why no one removes it: public schools, overwhelmingly, plus police, fire and roads. A state that abolished property tax would have to fund its school districts from somewhere else on day one, at a scale no other state tax reaches.

So the question that does have an answer is not which state, but which county. The rate varies more within most states than between them, and this site has all 3,143 of them individually.

The states where it is lowest, which is the question people meant

Median county effective rate — tax actually paid over median home value, the only measure comparable across state lines, since assessment practice differs so much that comparing nominal rates means nothing.

1. Hawaii — 0.28%, $1,137 a year on a $400,000 home.

2. Alabama — 0.33%, $1,320 a year on a $400,000 home.

3. Colorado — 0.39%, $1,543 a year on a $400,000 home.

4. Louisiana — 0.42%, $1,684 a year on a $400,000 home.

5. Delaware — 0.46%, $1,832 a year on a $400,000 home.

6. West Virginia — 0.48%, $1,939 a year on a $400,000 home.

7. Utah — 0.49%, $1,964 a year on a $400,000 home.

8. Tennessee — 0.50%, $2,012 a year on a $400,000 home.

9. Idaho — 0.50%, $2,014 a year on a $400,000 home.

10. Nevada — 0.51%, $2,031 a year on a $400,000 home.

And the other end, because the spread is the story: New Jersey at 2.20%, New York at 2.19%, New Hampshire at 1.98%, Illinois at 1.85%, Connecticut at 1.80%. On the same $400,000 house that is $8,818 a year against $1,137 — a difference of $7,680, every year, for the identical house.

Read that against the national median of 0.84% and notice what it does to the usual advice. That spread is larger, for most households, than the state income tax difference people move for — and it is charged whether or not you earned anything that year.

The cheapest counties in the country, which are not in the cheapest states

The state median hides the thing that decides your bill. These are the lowest effective rates among all 3,132 counties with Census data:

Copper River Census Area, Alaska — 0.08%, $323 on a $400,000 home.

Northwest Arctic Borough, Alaska — 0.12%, $490 on a $400,000 home.

East Feliciana Parish, Louisiana — 0.15%, $614 on a $400,000 home.

Maui County, Hawaii — 0.17%, $672 on a $400,000 home.

Choctaw County, Alabama — 0.18%, $712 on a $400,000 home.

Allen Parish, Louisiana — 0.18%, $718 on a $400,000 home.

Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana — 0.20%, $812 on a $400,000 home.

West Carroll Parish, Louisiana — 0.20%, $816 on a $400,000 home.

Several of those sit in states that are nowhere near the top of the previous list, which is the point: choosing a state gets you an average, choosing a county gets you a rate. Within a single state the cheapest and dearest counties routinely differ by a factor of three or more.

The caveat that belongs with any very low rate: it usually means low assessed values rather than generous districts, and low assessed values usually come with fewer of the services the tax pays for. A rate is not a bargain on its own.

The county decides your bill, and the state barely narrows it down

This is the finding that makes state-level lists misleading, and it falls straight out of having every county rather than a state average.

Texas — from 0.33% in Crockett County to 2.09% in El Paso County. On a $400,000 home that is $1,332 against $8,344, a difference of $7,013 a year without leaving the state.

Florida — from 0.45% in Walton County to 1.05% in Hardee County. On a $400,000 home that is $1,816 against $4,198, a difference of $2,382 a year without leaving the state.

New York — from 0.69% in Kings County to 3.00% in Orleans County. On a $400,000 home that is $2,752 against $11,984, a difference of $9,232 a year without leaving the state.

California — from 0.54% in Trinity County to 0.91% in Kern County. On a $400,000 home that is $2,154 against $3,648, a difference of $1,494 a year without leaving the state.

Ohio — from 0.79% in Noble County to 2.08% in Cuyahoga County. On a $400,000 home that is $3,156 against $8,338, a difference of $5,182 a year without leaving the state.

Pennsylvania — from 0.81% in Bedford County to 1.98% in Delaware County. On a $400,000 home that is $3,246 against $7,938, a difference of $4,692 a year without leaving the state.

Set those ranges beside the gap between the cheapest and dearest states — 0.28% in Hawaii to 2.20% in New Jersey, 1.92 points apart.

The typical state contains a spread of 0.73 points between its cheapest and dearest county — 38% of the entire national range, inside one state. And in 2 states — New York and Wisconsin — the internal spread is wider than the national one outright: move across a county line there and your tax can change by more than moving from the cheapest state in the country to the dearest.

Which is why a state median is a poor thing to choose on. It is an average of the very numbers that disagree, and the disagreement is the size of the decision.

Which is why "which state has the lowest property tax" is the wrong question asked in good faith. The right one is which county, and after that which district, because the rate on your bill is the sum of every authority that overlaps your address.

Why a low rate and a low bill are not the same thing

The rates on this page are effective rates — tax actually paid over home value — and that choice matters more than it sounds.

The number your county publishes is usually a millage rate applied to an assessed value, and the assessed value is often a fraction of what the house would sell for. A county assessing at 40% of market value and charging twice the millage of its neighbour charges the same money. Comparing published rates across state lines therefore tells you almost nothing, which is why this site does not do it.

The second reason a low rate can produce a high bill is the obvious one: the bill is the rate times the house. Hawaii charges 0.28% and New Jersey charges 2.20%, but a $900,000 home in Hawaii pays $2,559 while a $250,000 home in New Jersey pays $5,511. The cheaper rate produced the larger bill, and both figures are correct.

So the comparison worth making is never rate against rate. It is the bill on the house you would actually buy, in the county you would actually buy it, against the one you have now.

What comes closest to not paying it

No state removes the tax, but most of them blunt it, and the mechanisms are worth knowing because they are claimed rather than automatic.

Homestead exemptions take a fixed amount off the assessed value of a home you actually live in. 30 states in this dataset have one, and in several it must be applied for once — people who never apply pay more than their neighbours for identical houses.

Caps limit how fast the bill or the assessment can rise. 16 states have one, and the three kinds are not equivalent: a cap on assessed value limits the base; a cap on the bill limits what you are charged; a cap on the levy limits only what the district collects in total, so your own bill can still rise well beyond it if your property gained value faster than your neighbours'.

Senior and veteran freezes stop the assessment moving after a qualifying age or status. These are the closest thing in the United States to not paying property tax, and they are the reason the same street can contain two identical houses with bills that differ by thousands.

None of these is a state with no property tax. They are ways of paying less of one, and every one of them has to be claimed by you.

The states with the largest homestead exemptions in this dataset, and what each takes off the assessed value before any rate is applied:

Alaska — $150,000 off the assessed value.

Texas — $140,000 off the assessed value, and a cap of 10% on assessed value.

Idaho — $125,000 off the assessed value.

Hawaii — $120,000 off the assessed value.

District of Columbia — $89,850 off the assessed value, and a cap of 10% on the bill.

Louisiana — $75,000 off the assessed value.

Mississippi — $75,000 off the assessed value.

Florida — $51,411 off the assessed value, and a cap of 3% on assessed value.

On a $400,000 home at the national median rate of 0.84%, an exemption of $50,000 is worth $419 a year — every year, for as long as you live there, and forfeited entirely by anyone who never files the form.

And the trade people are actually asking about

Most searches for a state with no property tax are really about moving somewhere cheaper overall, and the usual pairing is with the states that charge no income tax.

That pairing runs the wrong way more often than not. 3 of the nine states with no income tax sit above the national median county property rate — South Dakota at 1.08%, Texas at 1.25%, New Hampshire at 1.98%. The money has to come from somewhere, and where there is no income tax it usually comes from the house.

So the two questions are one question. What decides it is the ratio between what you earn and what your home is worth: income tax scales with earnings, property tax follows the house, and a household heavy on one and light on the other gets the opposite answer from a household the other way round. The nine states with no income tax has a calculator that runs both sides on your own numbers.

You pay it even if you do not own anything

Property tax is the one big tax people believe they escape by renting, and they do not. It is in the rent, because a landlord's property tax is a cost of holding the property and costs of holding a property set the floor under what it is let for.

What changes is the visibility. An owner gets a bill with the districts itemised on it and can appeal the assessment; a tenant gets a number with everything already inside and no standing to question any of it. The same tax, one of them legible.

It also changes with the market rather than with your bill. Where rents are set by scarcity the tax passes through almost completely; where there is slack it is absorbed by the landlord for a while. Neither case is a tenant not paying it — it is a tenant paying an amount nobody will itemise for them.

Which matters for the comparison this page exists to serve. Someone weighing a move to a state with no income tax and a heavy property tax will feel it through the rent even if they never buy, and a calculation that counts only the income tax saved will be wrong in the same direction either way. On a $400,000 property at New Hampshire's median rate of 1.98%, the tax alone is $660 a month before the landlord has paid for anything else.

Where these figures came from

US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year 2023 — B25103 median real estate taxes paid · B25077 median home value · B19013 median household income Read 2026-08-31. https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs

3,132 of the 3,143 counties have an effective rate of their own in that survey. The 11 that do not are too small for the ACS to publish one, and every ranking on this page is computed from the 3,132 that do — none of the medians here is propped up by a substituted figure.

The effective rate is median real estate tax paid divided by median home value, county by county. It is used here rather than a millage rate because millage is meaningless across state lines: states assess at different fractions of market value, so two counties charging the same nominal rate can charge very different amounts of money.

What this page does not tell you is your bill. An effective rate is a county median, and your own assessment, your exemptions and your district's levy all move it. Every county on this site has its own page with the layers on the bill shown separately.

Questions

Which states have no property tax?

None of the fifty. Property tax is levied by counties, municipalities and school districts rather than by states, and it is the main source of school funding, so no state has abolished it. The lowest median county rate in the country is Hawaii at 0.28% and the highest is New Jersey at 2.20%.

Which state has the lowest property tax?

Hawaii, with a median county effective rate of 0.28% — $1,137 a year on a $400,000 home, against a national median of 0.84%. But the state median hides a lot: within most states the cheapest and dearest counties differ by a factor of three or more, so the county is the unit that decides your bill.

Can you avoid property tax in the US?

Not entirely, but most states blunt it. Homestead exemptions take a fixed amount off the assessed value of a home you live in; caps limit how fast the bill or the assessment can rise; senior and veteran freezes stop the assessment moving altogether. All of them have to be claimed, and people who never apply pay more than their neighbours for identical houses.

Do states with no income tax have higher property taxes?

Frequently. 3 of the nine sit above the national median county rate of 0.84%, led by New Hampshire at 1.98%. It is arithmetic rather than coincidence: a state that gives up income tax has to raise the money somewhere, and the house is where it usually goes.

Why is there no state without property tax?

Because states do not levy it. Counties, municipalities, school districts, fire districts and water districts do — thousands of separate authorities, each setting a rate against its own budget. A state legislature cannot abolish a tax it does not collect, and abolishing it locally would leave school districts with no funding on day one.