I put this together because I always see property taxes compared across states talking about % of home value, or raw $ amount. But it always irked me because houses are different sizes in different states. So what I did here is the following:

1. Tabulated the median annual property tax bill for a house in each state.

2. Tabulated the median house size in each state.

3. Divided #1/#2 to get a "property tax bill per square foot".

4. Sorted the table from lowest to highest tax $/sqft

In this way, if we compare column #3, we actually are comparing apples to apples (same home size to same home size). You can see that column #3 is similar to column #1, since there isn't THAT much of a difference in house sizes between states, but there are some interesting differences that cause a few states to jump higher in column 3 than they are in column 1.

Some brief conclusions:

Utah is actually cheaper than it seems because their houses are HUGE

Hawaii is actually more expensive than it seems because their houses are TINY

Missouri is actually a bit more expensive than it seems because their houses are smaller than average

Connecticut is actually a bit cheaper than it seems because their houses are much bigger than their high tax state neighbors (NY, NJ, MA)

New York is much more expensive than it seems (even though it already is towards the top) due to small house sizes.

New Jersey is just super expensive for property taxes, whether you factor in house size or not.

Anyway, hope folks enjoy this little bit of data. Maybe it will help a few people make more educated decisions, maybe not. If nothing else, it's just a curious thing to analyze.

https://professpost.com/top-10-u-s-states-with-the-highest-property-taxes-for-homeowners-in-2025/