It is important to factor property taxes into a new home purchase, especially when moving to a new ZIP code.
While each US state requires homeowners to pay property taxes — which fund public schools, police and fire departments, and the construction of city streets and roads — the amount can vary from one city to the next. The sum often depends on several factors including, location, home prices and tax laws.
A new list from mortgage marketplace LendingTree identified how much homeowners are paying for property taxes in 50 of the nation's largest metropolitan areas. The company analyzed data from the Census Bureau on the median amount paid each fiscal year.
Insider has highlighted the top 10 metros where homeowners are paying the least in property taxes. Most of the urban areas that made the list are located in the southern United States.
Take Birmingham, Alabama, for example, where homeowners pay the lowest property taxes on the list of an average of $995 a year. That's a staggering $8,096 cheaper than the property taxes of those living in New York.
However, just because the South has relatively low property taxes now doesn't mean it will remain that way.
Jacob Channel, the chief economist at LendingTree, told Insider that the robust numbers of people moving to southern states and higher home prices are resulting in steady real-estate tax increases in previously affordable cities like Austin and Dallas.
"In some ways, it's surprising. In some ways, it's not," Channel said. "High property taxes are usually dominated by East Coast or California metros. But as Texas becomes more popular, it is likely that property values and taxes are going to continue to rise."
Read on for the 10 US cities with the lowest property taxes, how much tax bills have climbed in each metro since 2019, and how home prices have fared during that same time, according to LendingTree and data from real-estate brokerage Redfin.