The Current Surge in Sold Prices of Homes Will Cause a Jump in 2023-2024 Property Taxes  

In Colorado, property taxes are based on a calculation of what each property might have sold for on June 30th of the prior even-numbered year.

That means the property taxes for 2023 and 2024 will be based on what your home could have sold for on June 30, 2022. Given the crazy surge in home prices, you could see a 30% or higher jump in your property’s assessed valuation and therefore a 30% or higher jump in your property taxes for the next two years. 

The chart below shows the likely impact of the current run-up in median prices compared to the median prices in prior Junes of even-numbered years, based on data from REcolorado. Although your home’s valuation will be based on the sales of comparable homes near yours leading up to June 30, 2022, the fact that the median sold price of residential properties metro-wide will have increased by over 30% from June 30, 2020, suggests that your home’s valuation and therefore your taxes could rise by 30 percent or more.

I’ve estimated (conservatively) that the median sold price in June will be $570,000 because the median sold price was already $540,000 in February. That is already a 27.7% increase over June 2020.

That, however, is an average for the entire Denver metro area, defined for these purposes as within 25 miles of the state capitol.  There are locales within the metro area where the increase in values over the last two years have approached 35% or more. Here is how that metro-wide 27.7% average increase of Feb. 2022 over June 2020 breaks down by county:

Denver County—19.5%

Jefferson County—30.1%

Douglas County—31.9%

Adams County—28.6%

Arapahoe County—27.1%

Boulder County—40.7%

Gilpin County—42.4%

The appreciation also varies greatly by city addresses:

Golden addresses—15.9%

Littleton addresses—26.0%

Arvada addresses—33.0%

Broomfield—27.2%

Centennial—36.9%

Aurora—30.5%

Highlands Ranch—31.8%

Castle Rock—36.5%

So, keep an eye on what homes like yours are selling for this April, May and June of this year to get a sense of what the county assessor’s valuation of your home will look like when you get that notification in May 2023.

About 50 readers are receiving “neighborhood alerts” from me.  These are email alerts regarding all MLS listings within your particular neighborhood. Usually, the alerts cover a certain subdivision or ZIP code, but they could be structured to include only listings which are comparable to your own home. For example, if you have a 1970s ranch home, I could set up an alert that only includes ranch-style homes built between 1960 and 1990 within a half mile or mile of your home. This will give you the best indication of how the value of your own home may be calculated by your county assessor. Feel free to email me at my address below to request such an alert or to modify the alert I am already sending you.