Property taxes in the United States are local taxes levied on property owners by various jurisdictions, including counties, cities, school districts, and special districts. These taxes are a major source of revenue for local governments, and a significant portion of them supports public schools, covering teacher salaries, school facilities, and educational programs.

Property taxes are also used to finance local police and fire departments and to maintain and improve infrastructure, such as roads, bridges, and public transportation systems, which are crucial for economic activity and commuter safety. Depending on the area, taxes could also be used to fund parks, recreational facilities, libraries, and other public amenities–or to support social services, such as housing assistance, food security initiatives, and services for seniors and individuals with disabilities. 

So altough few look forward to paying taxes, it’s important to remember that they play a critical role in maintaining and improving the standard of living across the United States.

States with the Lowest Property Tax Rates

• Hawaii: 0.28%
• Alabama: 0.41%
• Colorado: 0.51%
• Nevada: 0.55%
• Louisiana: 0.56%

States with the Highest Property Tax Rates

• New Jersey: 2.47%
• Illinois: 2.23%
• Connecticut: 2.16%
• New Hampshire: 2.09%
• Vermont: 1.90%

Property Tax Rates and Median Home Values

Property Tax Burden (% of Personal Income)

Property Taxes by State (2020 – 2024)

How Are Property Taxes Calculated?

Assessment of Property Value

Property taxes are based on the assessed value of a property, determined by local tax assessors. Typically, the assessed value is a percentage of the property’s fair market value.

Assessors often use various methods to determine property value, depending on what information might be more recent and available. For example, the comparable sales method involves comparing the property that is being appraised to similar properties that have recently sold. The depreciated cost method, on the other hand, calculates the cost to replace the property minus depreciation–while the income method evaluates a property’s ability to generate income. 

Cadastral maps are often used to aid in the assessment process to avoid any doubts arising about property lines or land ownership. Cadastral maps visualize all those details, facilitating real estate transactions and helping tax assessors find the answers they need. 

Tax Rate (Millage Rate)

The millage rate is essentially a property tax levied per $1,000 of a property’s assessed value. This rate is used to calculate the property tax owed. For instance, a millage rate of 20 means $20 in tax for every $1,000 of assessed property value.

Property owners usually pay taxes to multiple government entities like counties, cities, and school districts–depending on the area where their property is located. Each of these entities sets its own millage rate. Therefore, the total property tax is a sum of taxes imposed by all applicable jurisdictions.

Several factors influence millage rates, including the level of government spending, fluctuations in property values, overall economic conditions, and the existence of property tax exemptions or abatements. It’s crucial to remember that the assessed value might differ from the property’s market value. Property owners can sometimes appeal their assessed value or benefit from property tax caps.

Calculation of Property Tax

Property tax is determined by multiplying a property’s assessed value by the applicable tax rate. The assessed value is an estimation of the property’s worth for tax purposes, which may differ from its market value. The tax rate is expressed as a percentage.

For instance, if a home is assessed at $400,000 and the local tax rate is 2%, the annual property tax would amount to $8,000 ($400,000 multiplied by 0.02). However, you should always keep in mind that properties might be subject to taxes from multiple government entities, each with its own tax rate, which would contribute to the overall tax burden.

Payment and Collection

Property tax bills are typically issued annually, but the exact timing and frequency of payments can vary depending on local regulations. 

Whatever the payment schedule, it’s important to stick to it, as property tax delinquency can lead to unpleasant consequences, including penalties and interest charges. In severe cases of non-payment, a government entity can even place a lien on the property, which can complicate property ownership and sales.

Variations in Property Taxes

By State and Locality

Property tax rates and assessed values vary across states and localities. For example, New Jersey has one of the highest effective property tax rates at 2.23%, while Hawaii has one of the lowest at 0.32%.

The average property tax bill also varies greatly, with some counties having median property taxes over $10,000 annually.

Exemptions and Reductions

Property tax exemptions and reductions can significantly alleviate the financial burden for specific groups of homeowners. These programs are designed to offer tax relief based on particular circumstances.

For instance, homestead exemptions often provide a tax break for properties that are the primary residence of the owner. Senior citizen exemptions offer tax reductions for homeowners who meet specific age and income criteria. Additionally, veterans and disabled homeowners may qualify for exemptions based on their service or disability status.

Impact and Importance

Revenue for Local Services

Property taxes serve as a primary funding source for essential local services, supporting a wide range of public functions, including education, public safety (police and fire departments), infrastructure maintenance (roads, bridges), and utilities.

In fiscal year 2020, property taxes accounted for a substantial 32.2% of total state and local tax revenue across the United States–meaning property taxes constitute roughly ⅓ of the funding used by local governments in delivering of essential public services.

Economic Considerations

Property taxes are often criticized for being regressive, meaning they can have a disproportionately larger impact on lower-income homeowners compared to higher-income ones. This is because the tax is based on property value rather than income. 

However, property taxes offer a stable and consistent revenue stream for local governments, which is essential for funding essential public services such as education, public safety, and infrastructure.

Recent Trends in Property Taxes

2024 has been a landmark year for the number of changes that have been made to property taxes across the nation. From coast to coast, homeowners and policymakers alike are grappling with rising costs, new tax measures, and the ongoing debate about the fairness and effectiveness of this fundamental source of local revenue.

In the Pacific Northwest, King County, WA, offers a prime example of upward pressure on property taxes, though the substantial increase was primarily driven by voter-approved measures aimed at funding behavioral health services, veterans’ programs, and public safety initiatives. This trend of using property taxes to address specific community needs is mirrored in many cities and fire districts across the county.

Meanwhile, states like Nebraska and Wyoming are actively seeking ways to alleviate the property tax burden. Nebraska’s ambitious plan to cut property taxes by 40% through a sales tax increase ultimately fell short, highlighting the complexities of tax reform. Wyoming, on the other hand, has taken more targeted steps, such as offering exemptions for long-term homeowners and capping annual tax increases.

Indiana and Colorado represent yet different approaches to property tax management. Indiana has focused on moderating increases for homeowners, mostly through a temporary increase in the homestead supplemental deduction which reduced the growth of net assessed value for homesteads by 8-10%. Colorado, on the other hand, has opted for a direct reduction in property valuations, though ultimately the state will have to reimburse counties directly for the reduction in property tax revenue resulting from these measures. These varying strategies underscore the diverse landscape of property taxation across the country.

Nationally, the average property tax bill for single-family homes is on the rise, having increased by 4.1% in 2023–driven in part by increasing home values. Overall, from 2019 to 2023, the median property tax bill for single-family homes in the U.S. climbed by around 24%, a trend that is particularly challenging for new homeowners, many of whom are caught off guard by unexpected tax assessments.

This is especially true for brand new homes since they are typically reassessed and property taxes can increase significantly from the estimated amount initially set aside in escrow. A 2023 survey found that over a third of new homeowners were surprised by their property tax bills, highlighting this as a common challenge. This mismatch between estimated and actual property taxes can lead to financial strain and higher overall housing costs.

The matter is not helped by the wide discrepancies in property taxes across the U.S. In fact, if you calculate it at the national level, homeowners typically pay about 1% of their home’s value in property taxes each year–but states in the Northeast, like New York and New Jersey, have much higher property taxes compared to states in the Midwest and South. 

From voter-approved tax hikes to legislative attempts at relief, the property tax landscape in the United States is in a state of flux. As homeowners and policymakers navigate this complex terrain, finding a balance between funding essential services and mitigating the financial impact on taxpayers will continue to be a top priority.

Fred Metterhausen

Fred Metterhausen is a Chicago based computer programmer, and product owner of the current version of Maptive. He has over 15 years of experience developing mapping applications as a freelance developer, including 12 with Maptive. He has seen how thousands of companies have used mapping to optimize various aspects of their workflow.

www.maptive.com

The post Interactive Map: Property Taxes by State in 2024 + Historical Data appeared first on Maptive.

While some companies are still meandering through endless spreadsheets, there’s a new wave of tools like Maptive that can revolutionize how you assign territories and empower your sales team. Let’s explore how mapping software can help you unlock these impressive results.

Visualizing Customer and Competitor Locations

The first step to creating a successful strategy is to understand your territory, and that includes knowing where your customers and competitors are located. With businesses evolving so rapidly, versatile and reliable mapping software is becoming a necessity to explore what’s happening around you

If you haven’t tried a location intelligence tool yet, now’s the time. The numbers don’t lie: the market for location analytics is exploding, expected to hit a whopping $32.8 billion by 2027. Gartner forecasts a seismic shift by 2025, with 75% of organizations leveraging location data to enhance customer experiences and boost their bottom line.

Some easy ways to wrap your head around the potential of using a mapping software include:

• Heatmaps: these types of maps can boost data interpretation by a solid 12%, revealing hotspots of customer or competitor density.
• Radius mapping: understand how close your customers are to your stores. After all, 93% of consumers typically travel 20 minutes or less to make everyday purchases.
• Mapping competitors: this strategic move can uncover vital insights, as confirmed by the 67% of executives who feel competitor intelligence is directly tied to performance.
• Demographics insights: answering the age-old question, where are your target customers? Layering census data with your business locations can help you identify high-potential areas.

How Maptive Aligns

Maptive lets you visualize all the above insights into one easy-to-use platform. With Maptive, you can effortlessly plot your customer and competitor data on interactive maps, giving you a crystal-clear view of your competitive landscape and customer distribution. 

Maptive can help you spot territories with a higher density of competitors or figure out which areas might be worth expanding into or where to concentrate your marketing efforts. In today’s fast-paced market. By harnessing the power of location intelligence through Maptive, you can make informed, data-driven decisions that ensure your business stays ahead of the curve.

Creating and Assigning Optimized Sales Territories

Efficient territory design can become your secret weapon to create territories that are fair for your sales reps, using smart criteria like customer segments, demographic concentration, sales potential, and more.

Here’s some cold hard data to help you grasp the impact of territory optimization:

• Companies that use technology for territory mapping are achieving sales goals a whopping 20% more often than their counterparts. 
• Just optimizing your territory design–without making other changes to your sales strategy–could lead to a significant sales boost of 2%-7%. 
• Studies show that when you get your territories just right, sales performance can shoot up by 30%.

How Maptive Aligns

Maptive offers you the power to not only visualize your sales territory but also to optimize how you manage it. With Maptive, you can create new territories and instantly share them with your team, no matter where they are. Plus, your team can access Maptive on any device, providing their invaluable on-the-ground insights and turning Maptive into a collaboration hub for your entire sales team.

But here’s where it gets even better: Maptive offers endless options for personalization. Your maps can reflect exactly what your team needs in the most intuitive way possible. And with 90% of information transmitted to the brain being visual, Maptive’s visual territory management tools are a game-changer for sales teams.

By jumping on board with Maptive, you’re joining the ranks of companies that have boosted their productivity by 10% to 20% through sales territory mapping software. So why wait? Get ready to elevate your sales game like never before with Maptive.

Analyzing Sales Metrics by Territory

A location intelligence tool can provide a comprehensive view of your sales metrics for each of your territories–including revenue and customer data–giving you insights to optimize your sales strategy and ultimately ramp up your revenue.

If you’re not leveraging mapping software to analyze your territories and sales metrics, you could be among the businesses losing out, with poor alignment costing between 2-7% of sales revenue. But fear not, even if you’re drowning in spreadsheets trying to decipher your sales data, investing in mapping software with automation and optimization capabilities could lead to a staggering 30% surge in sales performance.

On a tactical level, mapping software boosts your sales team’s productivity by guiding them to the best opportunities in each territory. It can also streamline the hunt for high-potential targets, slashing the time spent on research–so you can avoid being one of those businesses where sales reps have to waste up to 40% of their time just hunting for leads.

How Maptive Aligns

By letting you visualize sales metrics–like revenue, number of customers, average sales, etc–across territories, Maptive can help you identify high-performing areas, understand how to replicate their success, and avoid repeating any of the mistakes made in any underperforming territories.

Thanks to its always-updated database, Maptive can also help your sales team identify high-potential targets, saving them time on research and allowing them to focus on what they do best: selling. By zeroing in on the right prospects, you’re not just saving time but also big bucks–with outside sales calls averaging $308, while inside calls are a steal at $50.

Optimizing Routes and Travel Time

Route optimization is a very straightforward way to cut costs and make your sales team more efficient. Routes built with the right mapping software can help your sales team reduce how much time they spend on the road, dodge traffic jams and roadwork, and squeeze in more client visits while keeping gas and other costs in check.

• The route optimization software market is on a rapid upward trajectory, projected to grow by a staggering 10.9% annually. 
• Organizations leveraging route optimization technology have successfully trimmed their route lengths by 5-10% on average. 
• Route optimization isn’t just about saving time and money; it’s also a powerful tool for reducing environmental impact. Walmart’s recent Franz Edelman Award win highlights the significant benefits of route optimization, showcasing how it can cut unnecessary miles and CO² emissions.

Route planning can benefit more than just your sales team, especially if you handle your own deliveries. With last-mile delivery gobbling up over half of e-commerce shipping costs, efficient route planning can lead to significant savings, cutting expenses by up to 20%.

How Maptive Aligns

With 90% of Americans using mapping apps for driving, almost everyone can access real-time traffic data and avoid peak congestion. Maptive’s built-in route optimization tools supercharge that ability, allowing you to generate the most efficient route between prospects or customers within your sales territory.  So your sales team not just getting from A to B–they’re doing it in the smartest, most efficient way possible and cutting significant costs along the way.

Collaboration and Real-Time Updates

When it comes to managing territories effectively, collaboration is key. The right location intelligence software can become the central platform where you and your team can collaborate on territory maps, ensuring everyone stays informed with the latest data and insights.

If you are skeptical about how much collaboration can actually impact your sales bottom line, consider that 81% of sales reps said working together as a team helped them close more deals. 

Better collaboration means more shared insights and knowledge across the sales organization, which is the best way to avoid the creation of data silos, which are cited by 90% of organizations as a challenge to growth. In fact, data inefficiencies cost organizations an average of $12.9 million annually.

How Maptive Aligns

Maptive facilitates seamless collaboration among your team members. Whether you’re adding insights or updating customer information in real time, Maptive ensures everyone is on the same page. With access to maps and data from any device, you and your sales reps will be equipped to tackle challenges together and share in the success of optimizing your territories.

What-if Scenario Modeling

While predicting the future may seem difficult, businesses still need to plan ahead. That’s where location intelligence software can help, offering scenario modeling capabilities that help you anticipate various contingencies and prepare accordingly.

A survey by Synario shows that 85% of organizations are now using scenario modeling, a significant increase from 60% in previous years. This rise is understandable given that scenario modeling has proven instrumental for nearly 80% of companies in navigating economic fluctuations and 68% in making strategic decisions.

A case study by Cambridge Systematics showed how powerful scenario modeling can be. Their tools studied thousands of transportation scenarios in record time, helping planners understand the interactions among variables and relationships between decisions,projects, scenarios, and performance metrics.

How Maptive Aligns

Maptive is about to unveil its Automated Territory Optimization feature, which is designed to help you model different territory scenarios and make informed decisions in record time. This new feature lets you play around with different territory setups and “what-if” scenarios, so you can find the perfect fit for your business and adapt to market changes in a flash.

Brad Crisp

Brad Crisp is the CEO at Maptive.com, based in Denver, CO and born in San Francisco, CA. He has extensive experience in Business Mapping, GIS, Data Visualization, Mapping Data Analytics and all forms of software development. His career includes Software Development and Venture Capital dating back to 1998 at businesses like Maptive, GlobalMojo (now Giving Assistant), KPG Ventures, Loopnet, NextCard, and Banking.

www.maptive.com/

The post Using Mapping Software to Assess Threats & Opportunities in Your Sales Territory appeared first on Maptive.

In the modern era, you will still find visual communication being an integral part of how we tell stories or present things to others. Since the advent of television and cinema, visual aspects of storytelling have risen in importance and use. Nowadays, it’s an essential part of marketing and advertising but how can you use visual communication to generate more leads? 

What is visual communication? 

Within the fields of marketing and advertising, visual communication can refer to the use of any visuals, such as videos, images, or other graphics, to convey a message to consumers and potential clients. Companies can use visuals to grab people’s attention or even to deliver a message that goes beyond mere words. 

Why do we value visuals so much? It’s worth considering that our brains process visuals better than spoken or written words. In fact, if you hear some information, you may only remember 10% of it three days later. When that information comes with images, you remember 65% of the information. 

How do we use visual communication in marketing?

While the first newspaper ad is believed to have appeared in 1704, the true advent of visual communication in marketing started with first cinema, then television. Of course, cinema came first and ads appearing before trailers was the first form of ‘moving’ visual communication. Incorporating visuals in their advertising offered businesses opportunities they didn’t have with purely textual marketing.

Businesses use visual communication to both convey and evoke emotions in potential customers. Even a simple ad demonstrating the benefits of call scheduling software could show viewers that their business would be better with this product. A delighted salesperson who has managed to schedule a call with a lead and then close a deal makes for convincing marketing material. 

The visuals you use can go beyond the usefulness of a product or service; they can also provide a strong and recognizable brand identity for your business so that viewers will almost instantly know what company is behind the ad. You can use your brand logo or particular colors or you can even use consistent imagery that identifies you. 

The most common types of visual communication 

Visual communication is an almost constant companion today. Look at the popularity of emojis in messages to convey how the sender is feeling. While simple, it is an easy way of communicating emotions. When it comes to marketing and advertising, things can be both simple and complicated. 

Your teams need to think about the message they are trying to get over to the consumers but they also need to consider what people will listen to. They also need to use their data intelligence to understand what type of visual communication people most connect with. It can help to tie in any efforts with other marketing approaches such as trigger email marketing. 

Images 

Static images are the most common form of visual communication you will encounter. They can be used in adverts, on your website, or in social media posts. They are a good, and inexpensive, way of capturing people’s attention quickly. You can use them to show off your products or services or to advertise your brand as a whole. Where they perhaps fall short is that you can’t disseminate complex info with them. 

Infographics

Infographics are a great way to combine an image with information that you want to communicate. If you have a good designer on your team, you can have eye-catching graphics with information superimposed on any image. Infographics can be very engaging and you can use them for anything from greenhouse sales in Utah to highlighting the benefits of AI appointment booking. 

Videos 

Videos are another type of visual communication that people can connect with easily. And, given the growth of platforms such as TikTok, the potential reach can be impressive too. They can be used for anything from a simple unboxing video, to ‘how to’ guides for technical or software products. Another advantage of videos comes with UGC (user-generated content), something people identify with and which costs you nothing. 

Animations 

While you may think of animations as being something for children, they can be used effectively in marketing campaigns too. Although demanding on resources, they can capture people’s attention and impart information that could generate quality leads for your salespeople to close. It is worth noting that there are many budget animation software solutions though it can still be demanding in terms of time.

The killer combo 

Of course, a good marketing campaign is not going to focus on one type of visual communication. When your marketing team reviews its customer (and potential customer) data, they may find the demographics scattered across different platforms and appreciate different approaches. That’s where killer combos come into play. 

For example, say you are running a campaign to promote your secure remote support solutions. You might use an infographic to show the benefits, video to show the product being used, and so on. 

The whole idea is to look at the data you have and identify how you can maximize leads that will, hopefully, lead to sales. 

4 best visual communication practices 

You are probably already using some form of visual communication in your marketing efforts. But to take things to the next level, you should consider some (or all) of these best practices. 

Context 

Your starting point should always be the context of what you want to showcase and what you want to achieve. Having a clear understanding of that can help you decide on the format of the visuals you will use. For example, if you were running a campaign to promote domain name registration, you would probably decide that video would be ineffectual while an infographic could help generate new leads.

Of course, there are other factors that can come into play once you understand the context. How big is your campaign? A large campaign will likely benefit from the aforementioned ‘killer combos’. You also need to think about the budget you’ve been allocated as sometimes it’s not about what you want but what you can afford. 

Use video when you can 

Remember that 65% statistic from earlier. That shows that when you can, videos should be included in any campaign. People engage better with videos and it allows you a more dynamic form of storytelling. How many times have you cast aside the written instructions for self-assembly furniture and looked for a solution on YouTube instead?

While you may be focusing on lead generation, video offers you a wide range of opportunities to market your brand and what you do. You could have ‘behind the scenes’ videos or even a Q&A session with one of your managers. Both of these could increase awareness and might lead to people wanting to know more about your products. 

Short and sweet 

No matter what form of visual communication you utilize, you need to consider the probable attention span of consumers. People are unlikely to watch a 45-minute video on roi email marketing. However, if you condense the information into a short-form video, or even make a series of short videos, then you are more likely to see better engagement and lead generation. 

You should also think about a punchy opening. Consumers may decide in the first few seconds whether it’s worth reading or viewing your material. Use and visualize existing data to see what people like and, where possible, give it to them. Start big and finish big, ideally with a call to action (CTA) that will turn ponderers into qualified leads. 

Be original

How many times have you switched off a TV series or movie because of the lack of originality? The same holds true with using visual communication in marketing. Be as original as you can, especially when you consider that any material you use represents your brand. Of course, there is little you can do to make something like a ‘how to’ video stand out but there are some factors you can think about.

• Branding: Incorporating some brand identity in your visual can make your content stand out. It could be a logo or colors that identify your brand. 
• Consistency: Nor only do you want to build awareness, you also want to build trust. Keeping your visual communications consistent and ensuring they align with your existing messages can help nurture relationships. 
• Generating leads: Of course, your ultimate goal with marketing is to generate leads and achieve sales. Most of your material should include something that works towards that, whether links to landing pages or effective CTAs. 

The takeaway 

As with other marketing tactics, your visual communications are going to be governed by the data you have collected and what it tells you. By mapping out customer preferences, you may see that one type of visual is more effective in a region than others. But you also need to think about what you want to say and how best to say it. 

Similarly, you want to track effectiveness of the formats you chose. You may find that what you thought would work failed miserably so you need to rethink your approach. Keep collecting data and analyzing it so you can see what works best for you in terms of lead generation. Used properly, visual communications can be a great way of boosting sales.

Brad Crisp

Brad Crisp is the CEO at Maptive.com, based in Denver, CO and born in San Francisco, CA. He has extensive experience in Business Mapping, GIS, Data Visualization, Mapping Data Analytics and all forms of software development. His career includes Software Development and Venture Capital dating back to 1998 at businesses like Maptive, GlobalMojo (now Giving Assistant), KPG Ventures, Loopnet, NextCard, and Banking.

www.maptive.com/

The post How Can Visual Communication Generate More Leads For Your Business? appeared first on Maptive.