Property Tax in Cheshire County, New Hampshire

What the Cheshire County numbers mean

The median is the midpoint of the county's actual bills: half of Cheshire County homeowners pay more than $5,968 a year and half pay less. The exact bill for any one home depends on its assessed value, exemptions, and which school, municipal and special districts cover it.

Set against the median home value of $257,200, the median bill works out to a derived effective rate of 2.32%. That rate is an estimate computed from the two medians — no county publishes a rate calculated this way — but it adjusts for home prices, which makes comparisons between counties more meaningful.

The key figures for Cheshire County

For context, the New Hampshire medians are $6,505 of tax on $367,200 of value, and the US medians are $2,969 on $303,400. *Derived figures are estimates from Census medians, not official rates.

Cheshire County at a glance

• Median tax rank in New Hampshire: #5 of 10 counties
• Median home value rank in New Hampshire: #8 of 10
• Population rank in New Hampshire: #6 of 10 (76,945 residents)
• Population density rank: #6 of 10 (109 people per square mile)
• Land area rank in New Hampshire: #6 of 10 (706 sq mi, 7.9% of the combined county land area)
• Median tax as a monthly figure: $497; per $1,000 of home value: $2.32

How Cheshire County compares

The median tax bill in Cheshire County is about 8% lower than the state median ($6,505 for New Hampshire) and about 101% higher than the US median ($2,969 nationally). By median taxes paid, the county ranks #5 out of 10 New Hampshire counties with published Census data — 4 counties in the state have a higher median bill.

Comparisons cut both ways: a county can have a modest rate but high bills because homes are expensive, or a high rate but modest bills because homes are cheaper. Cheshire County's derived rate of 2.32% sits above the derived US figure of 0.98%.

Some extra context for Cheshire County: the median bill works out to about $497 a month, and the derived rate equals roughly $2,320 of tax per $100,000 of home value. The county is home to 76,945 people — the #6 most populous county in New Hampshire, spread over 706 square miles, a density of about 109 people per square mile. Its median home value, $257,200, ranks #8 among the state's 10 counties with data.

Nationally, Cheshire County's median bill of $5,968 ranks #83 of 3133 counties with published data — inside the top 3% of counties by tax paid. The county accounts for about 5.5% of New Hampshire's population, its median home value is about 30% below the state median, and at the derived rate the median home would hand over roughly 23.20% of its value in tax across a decade. Within the state, the distance from Cheshire County to the most expensive county, Rockingham County ($7,512), is $1,544 a year.

Counties nearest Cheshire County in the New Hampshire ranking

Cheshire County and its population peers

For a like-for-like sense of scale, compare Cheshire County with its national population peers: the counties nearest to its 76,945 residents, listed in the table below with their own Census medians. Of the 9 counties in that group, Cheshire County's median bill of $5,968 is the highest.

The closest population match is Cole County, Missouri (76,924 residents), where the median real estate tax paid is $1,728 on a median home value of $214,400 — $4,240 more than Cheshire County pays.

Staying within New Hampshire, the counties nearest Cheshire County by population are Strafford County (131,743 residents, median tax $6,582 on a median value of $332,400); Grafton County (91,759 residents, median tax $5,624 on a median value of $298,500); Belknap County (64,300 residents, median tax $4,897 on a median value of $340,000); Carroll County (51,259 residents, median tax $3,685 on a median value of $348,900). The spread in their median bills — all under the same state framework — shows how much of the property tax burden is decided county by county and district by district.

How the tax is worked out

The bill is built in stages. First the assessor puts a market value on the property. Exemptions — a homestead exemption above all — then reduce the taxable amount. Finally the combined local rate is applied. To see the scale: at the county's derived rate of 2.32%, each $100,000 of value corresponds to about $2,320 of tax a year, and a $400,000 home to roughly $9,280. Real bills use the official assessment and district rates, not this derived figure, so treat the example as a sense of scale only.

Illustrative bills in Cheshire County at the derived rate

The derived rate of 2.32% is only an estimate built from medians, but applying it to different home values gives a sense of scale for Cheshire County — and a quick way to compare with the state derived rate of 1.77% and the US figure of 0.98%:

Illustration only: real bills are computed from the assessed value, exemptions, and the combined rates of the property's actual taxing districts.

Checking your assessment in Cheshire County

Believe your assessment is too high? The practical order of attack is: obtain your record card and audit it line by line; collect comparable recent sales in Cheshire County; ask the assessor's office to correct anything plainly wrong; and, if the value still seems off, lodge a formal appeal ahead of the deadline printed on your assessment notice. Windows are short — often 30 to 90 days — and late appeals are usually rejected outright, however strong the case.

More New Hampshire counties

• Belknap County, NH — $4,897
• Grafton County, NH — $5,624
• Carroll County, NH — $3,685
• Sullivan County, NH — $5,616
• Coos County, NH — $3,511
• Strafford County, NH — $6,582

Frequently asked questions