Quote Originally Posted by iris lily View Post
Why do you consider that $200/month a lot of money? That seems fairly low to me, although I think of Twin Cities as being fairly high in taxes, for the Midwest anyway.
$2,400 a year is high relative to what I was paying in property tax when I moved into the house eight years ago (by about 50%; I'd have to dig to find the specific percentage). That figure also does not include the several hundreds of dollars we now pay separately as "fees" for street "maintenance" (I use that term quite loosely), plowing city streets (another generous verb), sewers and hydrants, permits, etc. So let's say closer to $3,000 a year. Our house is a mid-70s rambler of about 1800 square feet on a standard city lot and probably would sell for around $150-160,000 now (well below what I paid for it but at least slightly higher than it was during The Great Recession). The annual property tax amount has never gone down in all that time, even if the "taxable value" of the house fluctuated to reflect the disaster in the market. It does not help that the Minnesota Legislature manipulates property tax heavily in response to voting years and/or whoever squeaks the loudest about tax rates making it impossible to go on.

Maybe based on what others are paying, the property tax here (at least on a house in this bracket) is not killer. But it certainly has not seemed to track the value of the property and it does not reflect well on what people with similar houses are paying in first-ring suburbs here. And it's not the only higher tax we pay here. Like I said elsewhere, at least I can see where much of the money is going. But ... well, now we're reaching a whole separate off-topic topic.