Located just under two hours southeast of Phoenix is Tucson, the second largest city in the state of Arizona with a population of just over half a million people. The entire city is surrounded by the Sonoran Desert and multiple mountain ranges, namely the Santa Catalinas which give sweeping views of the entire area, all the way into Northern Mexico, which is just over an hour to the South. Because of all these aspects, yet with a smaller city feel than the state’s metropolis of Phoenix, Tucson has become a very desirable place to live in Arizona. However, before you purchase a home there, it is important to know all the other costs that go into home ownership—namely property taxes, which will be an additional expenditure on an annual basis. Below are some more details on Tucson property tax and how it compares to other major cities in America.
What Are The Property Values in Tucson, Arizona?
To understand how much property taxes are in Tucson, Arizona, you must first understand how property taxes are calculated. Which means you need to understand the system of coming up with the value of the property in Arizona first, as the state rules dictate how property is valued and then calculated in Arizona, while the local counties, like Tucson’s Pima County, dictate that specific tax rate for their home owning residents.
Basically there are two values given to every residence in the state of Arizona. The first is the Full Cash Value, which is basically the market value, or what the home could be sold for in the current real estate market. The other value is the Limited Property Value, in which an assessor from the state decides how much your property is worth. The Limited Property Value can never be higher than the Full Cash Value, and in most cases it is much lower. From the Limited Property Value figure, ten percent of that is called the Assessed Value of the property. This ten percent is then taxed by the particular county you live in within the state of Arizona.
How Are Property Taxes Calculated in Tucson, Arizona?
Tucson is in Pima County, which sets its own property tax rates for home owning residents. The standard property tax rate in Arizona is about 12 dollars per one hundred dollars of assessed value, before exemptions and rebates (which make it even less). So based on the explanation above, if the Limited Property Value as determined by a assessor was $200,000, then the assessed value would be $20,000. And if the assessed value was $20,000, then the annual property tax would be $12 per $100 dollars of assessed value, making the total tax per year $2400.
In Pima County, however, the property tax per one hundred dollars of assessed value is much lower, despite public annoyance that these rates were raised as recently as the summer of 2015. The property tax rate is now just under six dollars per one hundred dollars of assessed value, at $5.96. It was actually higher more than a decade before in 2001, when the rate $6.03 per hundred dollars of assessed value. In other words, these figures fluctuate regularly from year to year, making the average property tax residents pay also change annually. Residents in the county tend to complain that it is one of the highest rates for property tax in the state, but residents in Tucson would probably not complain as much if they had a bit more perspective, especially when they compare what they pay to other major cities in the Southwest and the nation as a whole.
How Do Tucson’s Property Tax Rates Compare to Other Major Cities?
Residents of Tucson may think their property rates are high when compared with many of the sparsely populated counties across the Grand Canyon State, but they are actually paying much less to the government than their compatriots in Phoenix. Average property tax rates in the state’s biggest city hover somewhere between 12 and 13 percent of one hundred dollars of assessed value. In other states, where property tax is determined in different ways, residents are paying many thousands of dollars more than the average Tucsonian. For example, in Newark, New Jersey, which has some of the highest property taxes in the nation, or Chicago, Illinois, residents are paying more than double what Tucson residents pay, depending on what part of their respective cities they happen to live in. And overall, the average property taxes nationally are well above what residents in Tucson pay. While a home with $100,000 of limited property value would be assessed an annual tax of around $600 in Tucson, the national average for home owners is over $1,100. So buying a home in Tucson shouldn’t be swayed by taxes. In fact, the low rate should make home ownership much more encouraging.
2 Point Highlight
The entire city is surrounded by the Sonoran Desert and multiple mountain ranges, namely the Santa Catalinas which give sweeping views of the entire area, all the way into Northern Mexico, which is just over an hour to the South.
Residents of Tucson may think their property rates are high when compared with many of the sparsely populated counties across the Grand Canyon State, but they are actually paying much less to the government than their compatriots in Phoenix.
