A Solano County midrange home is the sweet spot for property taxes
Solano county buyers may have a distinct advantage among Bay Area homeowners. Comparatively speaking, local property owners have a lighter tax liability as their property values fall in the middle of the cost spectrum, a recent report revealed. That reality may be yet another compelling reason to sell a current home and move into a larger Solano County property.
According to RealtyTrac’s U.S. Property Tax Rates Report, private residential properties valued between $100,000 and $1 million (the vast majority of local homes) came out on top in terms of taxes in 2014. Homeowners in that range paid property tax rates ranging from 1.22 percent to 1.29 percent.
Compare that to the most affluent Bay Area counties, where homeowners at the highest end of the scale paid the highest tax rates last year, averaging 1.77 percent on properties valued between $2 million and $5 million. On the other end of spectrum, properties at the lowest end predominantly represented by rural, central valley homes valued at $50,000 or less, ironically drew the second highest average property-tax rate of 1.68 percent.
Notably in the Bay Area, homeowners in all nine counties were required to pay lower tax rates than the national average in 2014, which equated to 1.29 percent. Although San Francisco County may have had the lowest local effective tax rate of 0.72 percent, followed by Santa Clara County (0.82 percent), Sonoma, (0.84 percent), Napa (0.86 percent), Alameda (0.89 percent), Contra Costa (0.90 percent), San Mateo (0.93 percent), and Marin (0.97 percent) counties, Solano County (despite being at 0.85 percent overall) still yielded its homeowners far more affordable tax bills as the majority of home values were well within the optimal range as noted above.
Compare that to nearby Marin County’s tax rate, that when combined with its notably large home values, meant that homeowners in the inflated-priced zip code paid the fourth largest annual property taxes in the U.S., averaging $11,422 per homeowner per year.