Press Release
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August 7, 2025
Property tax delinquencies rising as Americans struggle with increased monthly costs
IRVINE, Calif., August 7, 2025 — Cotality, a leader in property information, analytics, and data-enabled solutions, released its property tax delinquency report, showing delinquencies ticked up to 5.1% in 2025, after hitting 4.5% in 2024. That’s just slightly above the all-time low of 4.3% in 2019. Property taxes have risen 27% from 2019 to 2025.
“Many homebuyers assume that securing a mortgage means locking in stable monthly payments for the long term. However, rising home values often lead to higher property taxes, and over the past six years, this has become a reality for many homeowners. Whether they’re paying off a mortgage or own their home outright, rising monthly costs can put pressure on household budgets. Those without sufficient financial buffers, such as steady income or savings, may find themselves struggling to keep up with growing tax bills,” said Molly Boesel, senior principal economist at Cotality.
States with higher unemployment rates are seeing a significant increase in property tax delinquencies from the national average. Mississippi (13.8%), New Jersey (9.9%), West Virginia (9.9%), Washington, D.C. (9.5%), New Mexico (9.4%), and Delaware (9.3%) topped the list. Of the six states that topped the tax delinquency in 2024, three of these states have higher unemployment than the U.S. average. Two of the states that have lower unemployment than the U.S. average, Mississippi and West Virginia, are states with a low median household income. Meanwhile, Wisconsin (1%), North Dakota (1.1%), Wyoming (2.3%), Minnesota (2.5%), and Pennsylvania (2.8%) saw the lowest increases in property tax delinquencies, and all have unemployment rates significantly under the national average of 4.1%
Cotality also found that tax lien states have a higher average property tax delinquency (6.2%) than tax deed states (4.9%). Of the six states with the highest tax delinquency in 2024, five states were tax lien states. As indicated by the averages shown above, tax lien states tend to have higher delinquency rates than tax deed states.
As property taxes continue to rise, along with other costs of home ownership like insurance and repairs, delinquencies could also keep rising, threatening long-term homeownership.
To find out more about U.S. property tax trends, download the 2025 Property Tax Delinquency Report.
Methodology
The delinquency rates are based on a proprietary data set of nearly 15 million tax reporting events on approximately 8 million non-escrowed mortgage loans for which Cotality manages the tax servicing. Delinquency is defined as a property tax payment that is overdue, regardless of the length of time the property tax payment is overdue. Delinquency rates provided are based on the number of tax reporting events that are considered delinquent divided by the total number of tax reporting events.
About Cotality
Cotality accelerates data, insights, and workflows across the property ecosystem to enable industry professionals to surpass their ambitions and impact society. With billions of real-time data signals across the life cycle of a property, we unearth hidden risks and transformative opportunities for agents, lenders, carriers, and innovators. Get to know us at www.cotality.com.
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