Property Tax in Lincoln County, North Carolina

What the Lincoln County numbers mean

The median is the midpoint of the county's actual bills: half of Lincoln County homeowners pay more than $1,660 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 $279,500, the median bill works out to a derived effective rate of 0.59%. 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 Lincoln County

For context, the North Carolina medians are $1,815 of tax on $259,400 of value, and the US medians are $2,969 on $303,400. *Derived figures are estimates from Census medians, not official rates.

Lincoln County at a glance

• Median tax rank in North Carolina: #25 of 100 counties
• Median home value rank in North Carolina: #21 of 100
• Population rank in North Carolina: #32 of 100 (90,359 residents)
• Population density rank: #18 of 100 (305 people per square mile)
• Land area rank in North Carolina: #82 of 100 (295 sq mi, 0.6% of the combined county land area)
• Median tax as a monthly figure: $138; per $1,000 of home value: $0.59

How Lincoln County compares

The median tax bill in Lincoln County is about 9% lower than the state median ($1,815 for North Carolina) and about 44% lower than the US median ($2,969 nationally). By median taxes paid, the county ranks #25 out of 100 North Carolina counties with published Census data — 24 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. Lincoln County's derived rate of 0.59% sits below the derived US figure of 0.98%.

Some extra context for Lincoln County: the median bill works out to about $138 a month, and the derived rate equals roughly $594 of tax per $100,000 of home value. The county is home to 90,359 people — the #32 most populous county in North Carolina, spread over 295 square miles, a density of about 305 people per square mile. Its median home value, $279,500, ranks #21 among the state's 100 counties with data.

Nationally, Lincoln County's median bill of $1,660 ranks #1441 of 3133 counties with published data — inside the top 46% of counties by tax paid. The county accounts for about 0.9% of North Carolina's population, its median home value is about 8% above the state median, and at the derived rate the median home would hand over roughly 5.94% of its value in tax across a decade. Within the state, the distance from Lincoln County to the most expensive county, Orange County ($4,105), is $2,445 a year.

Counties nearest Lincoln County in the North Carolina ranking

Lincoln County and its population peers

Counties of a similar size can tax very differently. The table below shows the counties closest to Lincoln County in population across the United States, with their median bills and home values. Within the group of 9, Lincoln County ($1,660) ranks #7 of 9 by median tax paid.

The closest population match is Mendocino County, California (90,709 residents), where the median real estate tax paid is $3,376 on a median home value of $486,000 — $1,716 less than Lincoln County pays.

Staying within North Carolina, the counties nearest Lincoln County by population are Nash County (95,451 residents, median tax $1,320 on a median value of $171,100); Rockingham County (91,585 residents, median tax $1,230 on a median value of $156,000); Burke County (87,863 residents, median tax $1,191 on a median value of $170,500); Caldwell County (80,618 residents, median tax $1,112 on a median value of $174,000). 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 0.59%, each $100,000 of value corresponds to about $594 of tax a year, and a $400,000 home to roughly $2,376. 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 Lincoln County at the derived rate

The derived rate of 0.59% is only an estimate built from medians, but applying it to different home values gives a sense of scale for Lincoln County — and a quick way to compare with the state derived rate of 0.70% 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 Lincoln County

Most successful appeals are won on facts, not arguments. Start with the property record card held by the Lincoln County assessor: wrong square footage, an extra room, or a missing homestead exemption are common and fixable. Next, line your assessed value up against recent sales of genuinely similar homes nearby. Many disputes end at an informal conversation with the assessor's office; if yours does not, file the formal appeal with the review board named on your notice before its deadline, evidence attached, and keep paying the bill in the meantime so penalties do not build up.

More North Carolina counties

• Rockingham County, NC — $1,230
• Burke County, NC — $1,191
• Nash County, NC — $1,320
• Caldwell County, NC — $1,112
• Cleveland County, NC — $1,240
• Craven County, NC — $1,372

Frequently asked questions