The Property Tax Bill: Same House Price, Two Countries

By Neil Solomon · 2 min read

Picture a couple named Gina and Tom. They sell a $600,000 house in a suburb in the American South and buy a house at the same price in a colonial town in central Mexico. Before they close, Gina does something she has never done in twenty years of owning a home. She adds up every local charge on the old house.

The property tax bill is the biggest line, about $9,000 a year, and it covers the school levy, trash collection, water and sewer. Then come the smaller ones: a surcharge on the phone, taxes on fuel and natural gas, and fees on cable and internet. Some sit on the bills under names that do not say tax. Together they come to about $2,500 more.

Gina writes the total on the pad: $11,500 a year. Then she opens the file for the new house and finds its yearly property tax, about $500. The other local charges come to a few hundred dollars more.

She reads the two numbers twice.

About $960 a month. About $65.

You might say the two houses are not the same house. They are not. The price is the same, but each place charges a different rate on that price.

These figures are an illustration, and every county and town sets its own rates. What these two bills show is general. In some places, the yearly cost of owning the same-priced house is a small fraction of what it is in others.

Nobody in this is a villain. A tax bill pays for what a place has chosen to provide: schools, garbage pickup, water, roads. Different places make different choices and send different bills.

Most of us argue about income tax. For a homeowner, the yearly property bill can be just as large, and it is spread over many lines.

You could pull out your own bill and add the lines. Then, for any country you are considering, you could ask what the yearly property bill is on a house at the price of yours.

When you look at a country in our calculator, one number is the monthly spending. A house adds its own yearly bill, and it is worth looking up before you decide.

What is your property tax bill, and what is inside it? Tell us in the comments. Someone reading may be about to add theirs up.