Stunning new data analysis on the homes lost to tax forfeiture in Detroit shows that, in just a three-year span, $300 million in real estate transferred from homeowners living in Detroit to outside owners.
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Property taxes represent the largest source of revenue for most local governments, and data shows that even unglamorous downtown areas offer more value as taxable properties than big box stores.
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Mansions on large lots, not rundown properties in low-socioeconomic-status neighborhoods, are the real blight on a community’s financial health.
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Strong Towns interviews Dr. Christopher Berry, of the University of Chicago, on how we can begin making meaningful changes to the U.S.’s broken property tax system.
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The process for appealing your property taxes can be obscure, even when the appeal is merited (and more often than not, it is). This simple guide will help prepare you for when your property is next assessed.
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As an ad hoc committee recently discovered, owners of higher-valued properties are more likely to receive a tax break…simply because of bad data.
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If you don’t own a home, and don’t have plans to own one anytime soon, you might think property taxes don’t concern you. But, what if we told you that they definitely do?
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These curves are costing Americans a lot, both financially and physically.
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How have we come to the conclusion that most short-term rentals are taxed as “residential,” when many have no residents?
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Recently, the North Carolina Ad Hoc Appraisals Committee was challenged to face their own biases and fix their broken property tax assessment system. Here’s what happened.
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Across the country, the property tax system is causing economic hardship for homeowners—and it’s because the system itself is flawed.
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What is the real reason behind our striking property tax disparities?
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Strong Towns is partnering with Just Accounting for Health and Urban3 in a project to uncover the presence, and effects, of biases in tax assessment standards.
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In this follow-up to last week’s piece about Galesburg, IL, we’ll look at what the town needs in order to recover and thrive.
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Citizens of Galesburg, IL, are trying to save their public indoor pool and create a new activity complex. City council is sympathetic, but there's just one problem: money.
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The inequities in the tax assessment system are national. But the solutions will have to come from the bottom-up.
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If we want to live in a free and equitable society where everyone has the potential to succeed and experience prosperity, we have to understand where the inequities begin.
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Cities are the economic engines of our society, yet as a recent report shows, their fiscal stability can be seriously affected by local tax limitations.
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Has your property tax bill skyrocketed this year? It’s worth taking a deeper look into how your county or city does their assessments...
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Property tax cap laws have been around for decades and are now on the books in 44 states — most recently in Texas. So why are we still surprised when they make our local communities more fragile and less resilient?
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