LI property taxes highest in U.S.

Aerial views of Levittown homes in Nassau County, Nassau County is one of nine large counties across the United States where homeowners pay more than $10,000 a year in property taxes, a new report shows.

The average property tax bill in Nassau was $11,232 last year, one of the highest in the nation, national real estate information company Attom Data Solutions reported Thursday.

Nassau County has frozen property taxes for six of the last seven years and reduced the size of government, a spokeswoman for County Executive Edward Mangano said Thursday.

This year, 63 percent of homeowners’ property tax payments will go to schools, 21 percent to local governments and 16 percent to the county, the spokeswoman said. In 2009, before Mangano took office, the county share was 19 percent, she said.

If other municipalities had followed Nassau’s lead, “collectively property taxes would be significantly less than they are today,” Mangano said in a statement.

The other counties where property taxes were higher than $10,000 were Rockland and Westchester counties in New York; Bergen, Essex, Morris and Union counties in New Jersey; Marin County, California; and Fairfield County, Connecticut.

Suffolk County was not far behind, with an average property tax bill of $9,333, according to the analysis by Attom Data Solutions, previously known as RealtyTrac.

In Suffolk County last year, 69 percent of property taxes went to schools, 17.4 percent to local governments and 11.3 percent to the county, including 9.3 percent to police. The county has stayed within the 2 percent property tax cap for six years, a county spokesman said.

Attom’s analysis included 84 million homes in 586 counties with a population of at least 100,000, and at least 10,000 single family homes, using data from county assessors’ offices.

Across the country, homeowners paid an average $3,296 in property taxes. Only 32 large counties had average tax bills of $7,000 or more.

The costs of government — including schools, police and municipal services — are higher on Long Island than across the nation as a whole, said Joe Moshé, broker-owner of Plainview-based Charles Rutenberg Realty.

“To a large degree our school systems are the best in the country, so you can’t compare our school systems to school systems in rural America,” Moshé said.

The disparity in tax bills was not due solely to Long Island’s higher-than-average home values. Homes here are also taxed at a higher percentage of their market value, the study found.

Homeowners paid an effective property tax rate of 1.91 percent on homes in Nassau, and 1.99 percent in Suffolk, Attom reported. By contrast, American homeowners as a whole paid an effective tax rate of 1.15 percent, according to the company.

The analysis calculated taxes as a percentage of homes’ market value by using a computer-generated estimate of property values.

http://www.newsday.com/business/li-property-taxes-rank-among-highest-in-u-s-report-1.13371144

SCPOC

Property Owner Advocacy

LI property taxes highest in U.S.

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