I just updated a real estate property tax rate graph for Franklin County and Delaware County. As might be expected, many taxing areas showed increases versus last year’s update. The graph shows the dollar rate per $1000 assessed value of the home.
Click to enlarge chart
In central Ohio, we pay property taxes in arrears. The taxes we paid last June were for the period Jul-Dec 2008. The taxes that we will pay the end of this coming Dec, will be for the period Jan-Jun 2009. When a home seller sells their home, they must pay all the taxes that are due up to the closing date. Sometimes, this can equal up to 11 months of taxes. This can be a shocker for sellers if they’ve not considered it or didn’t use a Realtor® who gave them a Net Equity Estimate at the time they listed the home.
Our property taxes help fund our local school districts, which can be a contentious subject. Wealthier areas may be more likely to pass school levies, which can seem to give their district an edge over less wealthy districts. Some people would like to see that discrepancy removed such that all districts are treated more equally, regardless of the property values, and ability of home owners to fund levy increases. No solution has been given yet.
Since the tax rates are used to fund the schools, it’s convenient to also consider the Ohio Dept of Education’s annual Report Card for the districts. The Dept of Education issues one of six grades for each district, as well as for each school. The six grades are:
- Excellent With Distinction (Arlington, Dublin, Hilliard, New Albany-Plain Local, Olentangy, Worthington)
- Excellent (Big Walnut, Westerville)
- Effective (Buckeye Valley, Delaware)
- Continuous Improvement
- Academic Watch
- Academic Emergency
So how is YOUR district doing? Are you getting your money’s worth?
Copyright © 2009. Elaine Reese, Real Living HER. Reproduction of any portion of this blog post or the images is prohibited by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. If this post is being viewed on any site other than www.ReesesPiecesOfRealEstate.com then the material has been stolen without permission. Violators will be reported.
good information (as usual for your site); 1 question: is this a graph for a period of time?…not sure what the different bars represent for my district? (worthington)
have a great day!
Tom, thanks for stopping by again. Glad you appreciate the info.
The various bars within a school district are the various taxing districts within the school district. The Worthington School District has sub-districts that are Columbus city, Worthington city, Riverlea, Perry Twp, Sharon Twp, etc. A large geographical school district, like Olentangy, has many townships as well as some city corporations.
What this graph does NOT show is an overlay for the INCOME tax rate that might be charged by a city/suburb, which of course can also be influenced by the location of the homeowner’s employer.