Buffalo keeps getting national buzz as an affordable rust-belt revival city, but longtime residents say crushing property taxes are forcing families out — is the tax burden undercutting everything the region is trying to build?
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Add your commentBorn and raised on the East Side, watched my parents pay more in property taxes every single year while the city let their street crumble. My mom finally sold the house she lived in for 38 years because the tax bill got bigger than her monthly Social Security check. Tell me again how Buffalo is "coming back" for who exactly?
the counterpoint guy above is confidently wrong btw. when you factor in the school tax levy ON TOP of the county and city rates, buffalo metro households routinely pay 3-4% of assessed value annually. thats brutal by any measure. cherry picking one part of the tax bill to win an argument doesnt make the full bill smaller for actual homeowners
Property taxes in Erie County are high because New York State dumps costs onto localities that other states fund centrally. Medicaid alone is a massive chunk of the county property tax levy. This isn't some Buffalo-specific failure, it's Albany's structural problem. People who blame local officials without understanding the state funding formula are just venting, not solving anything.
ok so genuine question for the people defending the tax rates — can ANY of you name a single neighbor who moved here FROM another city specifically because of Erie County property taxes? I'll wait. The affordable housing narrative is built entirely on purchase price. reporters from NYC see a $180k house and lose their minds, they never stick around to find out what the carrying costs actually are lol
I relocated from Austin two years ago for a remote job and honestly the taxes were a shock. My house in the Elmwood Village is assessed at a value that feels completely disconnected from reality, and when I tried to appeal it the process was like navigating a bureaucratic haunted house. That said I still love it here. But yeah, the "affordable city" branding is doing some heavy lifting.
I used to think this was overblown until my cousin listed her house in Black Rock and three different potential buyers walked after seeing the tax estimate on Zillow. Three. In a hot market. There's your answer about whether it's affecting the comeback. It is. Quietly and consistently, exactly like the headline says.
My grandfather built his house in Cheektowaga in 1961. Same house. We kept it in the family. The tax bill has literally quadrupled since 2005 and not one thing about the neighborhood has improved to justify it. The schools are the same. The roads are the same. WHERE IS THE MONEY GOING. Someone please explain this to me like I'm five because I genuinely cannot figure it out.
Counterpoint nobody wants to hear: Buffalo's property tax rates are actually lower than most comparable cities in the northeast. Look it up. Rochester, Syracuse, even parts of Cleveland have higher effective rates. The problem people are really describing is stagnant incomes, not uniquely high taxes. Conflating the two makes for good Facebook rage but bad policy.
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