Prince William County Delivers Good Return on Property Taxes, According to SmartAsset

Submitted by SmartAsset, a Financial Tech Company  Some counties deliver a greater return on residents’ property taxes than others. A study by financial technology company SmartAsset compares counties across the U.S., measuring local crime rates and school quality relative to effective property tax rates. Prince William County ranked among the best counties in Virginia for value compared to residential property taxes paid. SmartAsset describes Prince William as such:

Prince William County

Prince William County is a largely suburban county situated on the Potomac River, southwest of Washington D.C. The average effective property tax in the county is 1.04%, 10th highest in the state. Real estate in Prince William County was most recently reassessed as of 2015, which means current assessed values should be close to 100% of market value. Prior to that reassessment they had dipped to around 80% of market value. The next reassessment is scheduled for 2018.

In Prince William County, Virginia the median home value is $345,900, median annual property tax payment is $3,584 and the average effective property tax rate is 1.04%. Prince William County's return on tax rate is above the national average according to SmartAsset's metrics.

Average Tax Rate 1.045% (Prince William County)

Property Taxes $2,612 (Annual)

Page, Virginia, scored best with 99.85 according to SmartAsset's measures. Arlington County scored near the top with 99.85 in overall value. Loudoun scores just slightly better than Prince William at 99.02. For a look at how top counties in Virginia compared, check out the table below:

Rank	County	Property Tax Rate	School Rating	Crimes Per 100k People	Overall Value Index
1	Page, VA	0.71%	6.00	13	99.85
2	Arlington, VA	0.87%	9.00	16	99.62
3	Henry, VA	0.52%	7.00	181	99.43
4	Hanover, VA	0.72%	10.00	77	99.36
5	Chesterfield, VA	0.87%	9.00	76	99.28
6	Charlotte, VA	0.57%	6.00	171	99.13
7	Loudoun, VA	1.11%	7.00	34	99.06
8	Prince William, VA	1.04%	9.00	66	99.02
9	Fairfax, VA	0.98%	10.00	52	98.83
10	Caroline, VA	0.67%	6.00	109	98.76

Smart Asset explains its methodology on its webpage. Methodology Our study aims to find the places in the United States where people are getting the most for their property tax dollars. To do this we looked at school rankings, crime rates and property taxes for every county. As a way to measure the quality of schools, we calculated the average math and reading/language arts proficiencies for all the school districts in the country. Within each state, these schools were then ranked between 1 and 10 (with 10 being the best) based on those average scores. For each county, we calculated the violent and property crimes per 100,000 residents. Using the school and crime numbers, we calculated a community score. This is the ratio of the school rank to the combined crime rate per 100,000 residents. We used the number of households, median home value and average property tax rate to calculate a per capita property tax collected for each county. Finally, we calculated a tax value by creating a ratio of the community score to the per capita property tax paid. This shows us the counties in the country where people are getting the most bang for their buck, or where their property tax dollars are going the furthest.