Denver retiree Bob Kratz, who has lived in Windsor Gardens for three decades, was shocked to find that his property taxes doubled to $900, even though his condo hadn’t risen in value.
The disabled veteran, who tracks his expenses like a hawk, also faced a $200 jump in his property insurance premiums. Some people may not bat an eye, but on his fixed income, the added costs have become a major source of stress.
“I’m 94 years old and only have so much saved. The faster it’s spent, the sooner I end up on the street or worse, in a nursing home,” he lamented.
Kratz is among the homeowners in the state who were hit with an unexpected and substantial rise in their property taxes, even though their actual home values were flat or even down compared to last year. The increases are primarily linked to the elimination of a temporary $55,000 discount in property values that ended last year. Losing that discount was more impactful for lower-value homes and condos.
Others have faced higher mill levies from local governments and school districts, which added to their bills. And some people continue to see their home values rise even as prices fall elsewhere.
“We are getting the phone calls, and we are happy to take them,” said Elbert County Assessor Susan Murphy, who is also the president of the Colorado Assessors’ Association. “People aren’t always happy, but they are pretty understanding once you can go through the calculation with them.”
Assessors are responsible for determining property values, not for setting the actual property taxes people pay. But county assessors’ offices are often the first place people turn when they struggle to understand the math behind their property tax bills, she said.
In Montezuma County, Richard Vogel, who lives just outside of Cortez, is among those who struggle with the math. He was hit with a 41% increase in his tax bill, despite the value of his home and land holding steady. His increase was mostly due to voter-approved mill levy increases for the area school district and fire department, driven in part by reduced support from the state, which is facing reduced federal support and large budget shortfalls.
“I don’t have an objection to a small jump,” said Vogel. But he questions why such large increases are allowed to be passed on in a single year, before asking: “Is there an end in sight?”
In the last assessment cycle, residential values, averaged across all of Denver County, were flat. In Adams County, they were down. But some gentrifying neighborhoods continue to see home values appreciate as older and smaller homes are demolished and replaced with significantly larger and more expensive structures.
Kelly Duff, who retired early as a music teacher because of a disability and gets by on $1,100 a month, has lived in the Mayfair neighborhood since 1998. Her bungalow, built in 1994, is snug at 722 square feet and has a gravel driveway and no garage. Duff, however, is now searching for options that will allow her to stay in her home.
Her home valuation last year was set at $563,000 by the Denver assessor, up from $485,000 two years earlier. Add the elimination of the $55,000 reduction against residential property values last year, and her property taxes have gone up from $2,200 a year to just over $3,000, she said. Her property insurance premiums have also shot up to $2,800 a year.
Duff blames the three “McMansions” that have risen around her since the pandemic — one on each side and a third across the street. It wasn’t bad enough that they cut off her sunlight; the trio also jacked up her property taxes, she said.
Zillow shows that a home on one side of Duff has gone from a market value of $496,000 to $1.8 million after it was replaced, while on the other side, the value rose from $270,000 to $1.66 million. The one across the street went from a scrape value of $597,000 to nearly $2 million.
The replacement homes on all three lots represented significant expansions, but the original price paid for the scraped homes mostly reflected the value of the land. Zillow values Duff’s home at $416,000, which is down from a peak of $523,800 in early 2022, when the Denver real estate market topped out.
Duff purchased the home for $131,600 in late 1998. Public records show her property taxes were $804 in 2002, not long after Duff purchased the home for $131,600. If Zillow is correct in its valuation, Duff’s property taxes have risen 3.7-fold, while the value of the home has risen 3.5-fold. What isn’t known is what her home would have been worth if her neighboring lots hadn’t been scraped.
Duff now has the upside of more home equity, but can’t claim it easily. If she sold, she doesn’t know what else she could afford in Denver. In a world that feels increasingly like what the character , she plans to turn to a reverse mortgage to stay afloat.
Colorado offers a program for seniors and active military, which allows a portion of taxes to be converted into a low-interest-rate loan payable upon the death of the homeowner or the sale or transfer of the home. Denver also for low-income residents who are either age 65 or older, disabled, or who have a dependent child in the household.
Unlike the changes in total residential values, which assessors calculate every two years and make public, finding aggregated numbers on what property taxes are levied per home is tougher.
“The state does not collect data at the property-specific level, so we are not able to show how many residential property owners are facing a higher property tax payment this year compared to last,” said Keith Erffmeyer, the state’s new Property Tax Administrator, in an email.
Absent a centralized database, discerning trends by geography or property type is hard. Given that the $55,000 discount on home values was a flat rate, owners of lower-cost properties, such as Kratz and Duff, are likely facing a bigger upward adjustment in their 2025 property taxes, which are due on April 30.
Developers have shifted a higher share of infrastructure and other costs into metro districts. Newer communities are also more likely to require new schools. Because more costs are wrapped into the property tax base in newer communities, homeowners there are also likely to face a bigger tax hit.
The Denver Post asked readers if they had seen higher property taxes this year, and nearly 100 responded. A large share of those who reached out were retirees and others on a fixed income who said they were struggling to absorb the increases.
What upset some was that they had counted on flat home values and the legislative fixes made in 2023 and 2024 to shield them from any more big spikes.
One reason that hasn’t been the case is that 2025 represented a “gap” year where old benefits disappeared before new ones could catch up. The flat $55,000 reduction applied against total home values in 2023 and 2024 is being replaced this year by a graduated 10% decrease up to $700,000 in value.
To ease the transition in 2025, the residential assessment rate for local governments was lowered from 6.7% to 6.25%. The school district assessment rate fell from 7.15% in 2024 to 7.05% in 2025. That is what is showing up in the tax bills that went out this year.
The residential assessment rate is the share of the total value of a home that is subject to local mill levies, which represent $1 in tax for every $1,000 in assessed value. Mill levies are the tax rates that local governments, school districts and special districts charge. They are highly localized.
School districts receive half or more of property taxes in most areas. Because the drop in the residential assessment rate for school districts was so small, it wasn’t enough to compensate for the loss of the $55,000 discount, especially among lower-cost properties, which are more likely to be occupied by lower-income residents less able to absorb any big tax increases.
Caps that limit property tax revenue increases in any given year to 5.25% for local governments and 6% for school districts also kick in this year. But the caps don’t apply to home rule cities, voter-approved bonds, or in jurisdictions where voters have approved waivers on limits. And even when they are applied, it doesn’t mean that individual property tax bills can’t rise faster than the caps imposed on local governments.
That said, residential property owners should see significantly smaller property tax increases next year than this year, said Chris deGruy Kennedy, president and CEO of the Bell Policy Center, a progressive policy group based in Denver.
Kennedy was in the thick of the negotiations to address the spike in property taxes that followed an unprecedented surge in home values during the pandemic.
“We couldn’t figure out a way to keep K-12 funding where they needed it to be,” he said. “There was a decision that we needed to sever the school district assessment rate from the local government assessment rate.”
Kennedy, as former pro tem Speaker of the Colorado House of Representatives, was a key architect behind Proposition HH, which provided a $40,000 property value reduction and attempted to use TABOR surplus funds to backfill local government funding shortfalls.
When voters rejected that, he guided a special session that approved the $55,000 value reduction, which was intended as a temporary fix.
In 2024, as a legislative member of the Commission on Property Tax, he spent weeks working on a more permanent solution. The only way to give homeowners relief while also protecting constitutional requirements for school funding was to create different assessment rates.
By splitting, the state could lower local taxes without draining the school funding protected under Amendment 23, which voters passed in 2020. The amendment obligated the state to keep school funding in line with inflation, even when local voters rejected the higher mill levies needed to make that happen. That obligation was chronically underfunded, which forced the state to divert revenues from other priorities. During the Great Recession, when there simply wasn’t enough money left in the budget, the state ran up a tab called the “negative factor,” which was later named the “budget stabilization factor.” That gap triggered lawsuits and finally eliminated in 2024.
When property values rose sharply, it offered a window to shift more of the local funding burden back onto homeowners, who had just lost a shield known as the Gallagher Amendment. Passed in 1983, that measure required residential property owners to cover 45% of the statewide property tax burden, and commercial property owners the remainder.
But because home price gains consistently outpaced the gains in commercial properties, the residential assessment rate, or the share of total property values subject to mill levies, continued to ratchet down, going from 21% to 7.15% when voters finally approved a repeal in 2020.
Businesses found themselves shouldering a heavier property tax burden, and rural areas, with smaller home price gains and a smaller commercial property tax base, struggled to keep pace. Homeowners were promised a more comprehensive fix of the property tax system and the repeal passed with a comfortable margin.
But reforms didn’t happen in time, and the delays proved costly. A sharp drop in interest rates to combat the COVID-19 pandemic unleashed a buying frenzy and an unprecedented surge in home prices, which in turn caused property taxes to spike once assessments caught up to the market gains.
Colorado ranks 48th lowest for its effective residential property tax rates in the country, due in large part to Gallagher, according to the . Other surveys put it at around the fourth lowest. But Colorado also has the highest average home prices outside of any coastal state. That results in a heavier per capita property tax burden, which ranks 26th or near the national average.
For homeowners on a fixed income or struggling to stay in a home due to low wages, the question isn’t where Colorado ranks for its effective property tax rate but whether they will have enough added income to cover higher monthly escrow payments or to meet their property tax obligation on April 30 without borrowing.
“This is an added stressor with healthcare, student loans, inflation. It is making it difficult to pay for things despite working two jobs,” said Frederick resident Lauren Carson.
“We are by no means in hardship, but all of the salary raises are canceled out by these increased expenses, so our savings are not growing as much as they should,” said Andy Heinz, a Denver resident who was hit with a $520 increase in property taxes this year.
Beyond higher property taxes, Colorado homeowners have seen homeowner insurance premiums double between 2020 and 2025, the biggest percentage increase of any state, . Colorado homeowners rank 14th for the share of their incomes that is required to cover property insurance premiums.
“No one is getting pay increases at the same pace as insurance and taxes are going up,” said Corey Morris, a Castle Rock resident. Morris said his property taxes are up $1,000 compared to last year and his insurance costs are up “substantially” the past two years.
Some taxpayers who responded said they have reduced their insurance coverage to afford higher property taxes, while others said they are deferring needed maintenance. Neither bodes well for the health of the state’s housing stock over the long term.
Kennedy said a growing share of the state’s population, not just the poor, struggles with higher living costs, of which higher housing costs play a big part. Critics have long argued that changes in property values, in either direction, don’t correlate with the cost of services and the financial needs of local governments.
The Bell Policy Center is leading a coalition to put a proposal on that ballot that would levy a higher income tax rate on households earning $500,000 or more a year. Kennedy argues that a graduated income tax would provide a more calibrated revenue tool than property taxes. And it could address equity concerns that pop up in wealthy enclaves like Steamboat Springs, where the rejection of higher local taxes has forced the state to step in and cover shortfalls.
Supporters also argue that a graduated income tax would help cover the funding gap resulting from the reduction in federal support.
But as with any tax change, it is controversial. Even those who said they could absorb the financial hit from higher property taxes expressed concerns about how tax revenues are spent and whether policymakers and government leaders understand the burden that higher taxes create for residents.
Louie Bucher, a resident of Washington Park West, said he wished Colorado had a California-style Proposition 13, which caps changes in the assessed value of a residential property that can be taxed. He can absorb the hit, but he wants more accountability.
“My biggest peeve is seeing what they spend the money on,” said Bucher, who used to live in the Golden State. “If the money is being spent responsibly, then it is a little bit easier to take. But then you see that the money is being wasted.”
Denver’s auditor Tim O’Brien, for example, found that the Caring for Denver Foundation, which receives a dedicated portion of the city’s sales and use tax to work on suicide prevention and assist those struggling with substance use problems, spent $28,000 on meals and $3,000 on expensive alcoholic drinks over three years.
While that program isn’t reliant on property taxes, Bucher said it reflects an ethos in the public sector where “it is a lot easier to spend other people’s money than your own.”
Some respondents, like Jake Cohen of Denver, try to keep the property tax hikes in a positive light by focusing on the good that the extra revenues will achieve. The cost increases that households are experiencing are also hitting governments and schools.
“It’s tough, but it’s important to me to contribute to Denver schools and new transportation projects like making streets safer; they all deliver value to me and are part of making Denver better. And those costs are going up too,” Cohen said.
The residential assessment ratio for schools and local governments is expected to go back up, but the precise rate won’t be known until November. It will be largely offset by the 10% reduction in total value applied. On average, property tax bills should stabilize next year in most areas, assuming home values don’t rise sharply before mid-year.
Kennedy did a rough back-of-the-envelope calculation for a typical home in Jefferson County, where he lives. If property taxes went up $300 this year, the property tax increase next year will likely be closer to around $30, he predicts.
In another change, seniors who move can now carry their homestead exemption with them to a new primary residence. That exemption provided a 50% discount on the first $200,000 of a home’s actual value, provided someone over 65 had lived in the home for 10 years or more. That exemption used to end when a senior moved, but it has been made portable, including for recent moves.
Fear of losing that exemption froze older homeowners who might have wanted to downsize in place, tying up larger homes that could benefit younger families, critics argued.
The deadline to apply for the “” is March 15, but applications are being accepted through July 15, although the right to appeal a rejection of an application goes away for those filing after the initial deadline. The benefits of the broadened exemption will show up in next year’s property tax bill for those who qualify.
