Question about Property Tax in St Louis (St. Louis, Florissant: real estate, houses)

[charles1169]

I am getting confused about prop tax in StL - is it really 7+%/yr? Then I read that taxes are only assessed on 19% of the house's value. Is that correct? We are just starting to investigate the area as we MAY take a job there but high prop tax rates are a bugaboo of mine. Could anyone clarify prop tax rates in StL - are they high or low? Thanks in advance.

[glamatomic]

If you go to St Louis County and then go to PROPERTY AND ROADS and then TAXES AND DEEDS and then scroll down and click on REAL ESTATE INFORMATION and punch in an address- you can bring up the Property Tax records for any applicable property in St. Louis County. I'm not sure if the city has a similar feature but it probably does.

Property Tax in St. Louis / County is fairly high- but it's a fair compensation considering the overall low cost of living and 'bang for your buck' in St. Louis.

EDIT: The property DH & I are looking at purchasing is taxed at 9% of it's total land value or 1.78% of it's total assessed value. It's in Florissant in St. Louis County.

[aragx6]

That's pretty much exactly right. This FAQ on the city's Web site can probably answer a lot of your questions:
http://stlouis-mo.gov/government/departments/assessor/Frequently-Asked-Questions.cfm
As a rule though property taxes are actually pretty unbelievably low when compared to damn near everywhere else -- motsly because houses are so inexpensive. Property taxes in some suburbs of St. Louis are notably higher.

[marigolds6]

Real Estate Information is the site to go to find information on a specific property in St Louis County.
Basically tax rates are high, but assessed values are very low.

The key thing is that in Missouri, assessed value only matters in relative proportion. If your assessed value is $200k and the rest of your school district is mostly $100k, you are going to have high property taxes. If your assessed value is $400k and the rest of your school district is million dollar properties, you are going to have low property taxes.

The reason for this is that the jurisdiction sets their budget and then can roll up the tax rate (to an extent) to match this budget. So assessed value determines what your share of the budget will be. Tax rate has little meaning from year to year. Best thing to do is to look up the recent taxes for the property or properties you are interested in and use that as your guide.