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Colorado property taxes are relatively low

Shawn Manwaring
Guest Column
Shawn Manwaring is a broker associate with Roaring Fork Sotheby’s International Realty in Glenwood Springs.
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When discussing real estate costs, many people tend to only talk about the sales price. By doing this, we tend to forget about the other expenses that go into owning a home. Aside from utilities, maintenance, insurance and more, there will always be property taxes. On a recent trip to New Jersey I was talking to a family about their property, and when they told me they pay about $13,000 per year in property taxes, my eyes almost popped out of my head before I asked them if they meant $1,300. “You’re not mistaken,” they replied. It’s important to note that they own a modest single family home that has four-bedrooms and two-and-a-half-baths and is about 2,500 square feet on a 1/3 acre lot in New Jersey. If they owned that same property on the Western Slope of Colorado, they would be paying about 90 percent less in property taxes.

The reason I wanted to explore this topic was because regardless of where you are in buying or selling real estate, you should always be in tune with what you can expect to contribute in property taxes. I have talked to many folks in the last year in Colorado who feel like home values are rising too quickly. I would disagree and say that simple economics indicate this is a necessity to keep pace with our current supply and demand. As a buyer, your purchasing power certainly starts to decrease as interest rates and prices rise, but that doesn’t mean you should be discouraged. With some of the lowest property taxes in the country, you can probably still afford more in Colorado than in many other places.

To speak to my point, here are some average annual property tax costs around the country for a $179,000 property: The lowest is Hawaii at just $487. Colorado comes in at No. 8 at $1,073. Number 25 is Georgia at $1,685 and highest on the list at No. 51 is New Jersey at $4,189. (Source: WalletHub.com)



So what do this mean to you? This means all of us who live in Colorado should be thankful that our property taxes are very low and that will allow us to do things such as; purchase a larger home, spend more on improvements, spend more on life experiences or vacations and keep more of our hard-earned money in our pockets.

Shawn Manwaring is a broker associate with Roaring Fork Sotheby’s International Realty in Glenwood Springs. Shawn services Western Garfield County and the lower Roaring Fork Valley. He can be reached at 970-389-6069, Shawn.Manwaring@SIR.com or http://www.Manwaring.


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