Oregon property tax question
 

I'm thinking of retiring to Oregon and so is my neighbor. He says when you buy a house there the property tax goes way up cause it's a percentage of the selling price, so a $300,000 house even outside the city limits will result in several thousand dollars of annual property tax. I find this hard to believe. I understand the property tax will go up, but surely not like he thinks. Can someone give me some real world numbers, say in the Grants Pass area? Thanks.

The property taxes here are differant for each county, and are based on value acording to the county tax assesser. I'm in central Oregon, the house values in my area range from 250,000 to 500,000, I'm on the lower end of that, My taxs run around 1200 a year.

I can't comment on the percentage of the sales price at all....some googling may help there. We've had our house long enough that I don't recall if we ever had the tax #'s from the PO of the house to compare to.

Seems like our taxes are in the 1.5k/year range in Eugene. Houses in my neighborhood are probably $140k-$340k. City limits, but county taxes & services. It's messed up where I live. About every other house has been annexed and their taxes double and then some.

Sorry, not much help here.

Mike

Thanks, fellas.

Well, i'm a little late chiming in, but I guess I'll add my $0.02. I just bought my first house here, and I can tell you that the tax didn't have anything to do with the sale price. As mentioned above it's based on the county's assessed value of your house. Mine is in a kind of high tax area (for the Portland area) and I'm paying $1600/yr on a assessed value of about $100k.

BTW, I paid $210k for it (which was a STEAL for the current values and area), the county has it's market value listed at $185k, and the taxable assessed value at $101k if that gives you any idea of how things relate.


If you really want to know, most Oregon counties have a GIS (Geographic information system) on the web that you can look up values like that (for example, Washington county's is http://washims.co.washington.or.us/InterMap/), and then find out from the county what the tax on the house is.

Thanks, Pitrow. I will look into that.

Me and my family moved to the OR north coast from Boulder County, CO because of a job relocation. I was warned about the high property taxes when moving to OR. The job relocation was in Beaverton, the Portland metro area. I chose to live out of the 5 county metro area and live on the north coast. I did not feel that property taxes were much out of line with CO but, I have heard that people are shocked with property taxes in the metro area. It seems as it is a lot more expensive in the Portland metro area, tax percentages, excusing the obvious higher property values. Although, coastal property values have been steadily climbing even with national property value declines.

You do get some breaks though. Car purchases (or any large retail purchase) and registration is cheap in OR. No tax. If you are going to buy a new car, appliance, wait until you are a OR resident.

Good luck with your search.

Thanks for the info, red.