A buyer comparing two Westchester towns usually runs the same mental math: same square footage, same commute to Grand Central, same three bedrooms, similar list price, so similar cost. That math is wrong more often than it's right, and the gap it misses isn't small.
Westchester's median single-family sale price has been running close to $1 million through the first half of 2026, with Redfin putting the three-month median at $937,000 through June and PropertyShark's Q2 tally landing at $1 million, up 17 percent year over year. Those numbers get all the attention because they're easy to find. The number that actually determines what a house costs to own, the property tax bill, sits one layer deeper, and it can differ by tens of thousands of dollars a year between two towns with nearly identical home prices.
That gap has always existed. What changed this year is whether it's worth recalculating.
The bill is not one number
A Westchester tax bill is a stack, not a single line. County services, town government, school district, and, in incorporated villages, an additional village levy all bill separately, and in many communities the school portion dominates everything else combined. For a typical Westchester homeowner, county-wide data puts the median effective property tax rate at 1.65 percent of market value, against a national median of 1.02 percent, and a median annual bill of $9,223, more than $6,800 above the national median.
Scarsdale is the sharpest illustration of what happens when every layer runs high at once. Its median effective rate runs closer to 1.97 percent, and its median annual tax bill sits at $25,605, nearly three times the countywide figure. Some of that gap comes from home values that skew higher. Some of it comes from a rate that's meaningfully above the county median. Both facts matter to a buyer, because both show up on the same bill, and a buyer comparing Scarsdale to a lower-tax Westchester town by list price alone is comparing two numbers that don't include the one that will actually hit their escrow account every year.
A house priced at $1 million in one Westchester town and a house priced at $1 million in another can carry annual tax bills that differ by more than a typical car payment, before either owner has done anything differently.
Why some villages catch up to the market faster than others
Here's the part of the mechanism most buyers never hear explained. Not every Westchester village assesses its own property. Villages like Ardsley, Briarcliff Manor, Croton-on-Hudson, Dobbs Ferry, Elmsford, Hastings-on-Hudson, Irvington, Mamaroneck, Ossining, Pelham, and Pelham Manor are non-assessing villages, meaning their property values are set by their underlying town's assessment roll rather than a separate village-level appraisal. Other communities, including Bronxville, Larchmont, Pleasantville, and the combined Town/Village of Scarsdale, run their own assessment rolls.
Scarsdale's assessor aims to value property at 100 percent of market value using an annual, computer-assisted mass appraisal that reviews comparable sales every year. That's a fundamentally different update cycle than a village whose assessed values ride on a broader town roll covering many more parcels, updated less frequently. New York State's equalization rate system exists precisely because municipalities don't all assess at the same fraction of market value, and it's the mechanism that reconciles a county or school levy across towns that assess differently. For a buyer, the practical takeaway is that a home's current assessed value, and how recently that value was set, can matter as much as the posted tax rate when you're trying to predict what your bill will look like two or three years after closing.
| Westchester County median | Scarsdale median | |
|---|---|---|
| Effective property tax rate | 1.65% | 1.97% |
| Median annual tax bill | $9,223 | $25,605 |
| Assessment authority | Varies by town/village | Village assesses independently, annually, at full market value |
This is why the smart question when comparing two towns isn't "what's the tax rate," it's "who set this assessment, and when."
The math that changed this year
Here's the part that's genuinely new for 2026. From 2018 through 2024, the federal deduction for state and local taxes, including property tax, was capped at $10,000 regardless of how much you actually paid. That flattened the after-tax difference between a high-tax Westchester town and a lower-tax one: whatever your property tax bill, you only got credit for the first $10,000 of it, so an extra $15,000 in Scarsdale-level taxes bought you nothing extra on your federal return. It was a straight, undiscounted cost.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act changed that starting with the 2025 tax year, raising the cap to $40,000 and indexing it upward by roughly 1 percent annually through 2029. For 2026, the cap sits at $40,400. There's a phase-out for higher earners: it begins reducing the cap once modified adjusted gross income passes $505,000, shrinking the benefit by 30 cents for every dollar above that line until it floors back at $10,000 around $606,000 of MAGI. Below that threshold, though, the difference is real. One tax-focused breakdown walks through a married Westchester couple earning $350,000 with $38,000 in combined state income and property tax: under the old $10,000 cap, only a fraction of that was deductible. Under the 2026 cap, the entire $38,000 is deductible.
That single change means the extra property tax a buyer pays for choosing the higher-tax side of a town comparison now comes with a federal offset it didn't have a year ago, for households under the phase-out threshold. It doesn't make Scarsdale cheaper than a lower-tax village. It makes the gap between them narrower on an after-tax basis than it's been since before 2018, and that's worth running through your own numbers before you decide a $20,000 tax difference is disqualifying.
Two caveats worth knowing before anyone gets excited about this. First, the deduction only helps if you itemize, and current 2026 standard deduction figures run roughly $16,000 for single filers and $32,000 for married couples filing jointly, so your total itemized deductions, mortgage interest included, need to clear that bar before the SALT math matters at all. Second, the $40,400 cap isn't permanent. It's scheduled to revert to $10,000 in 2030 unless Congress extends it, which is worth factoring into a decision you're making with a 10 or 15-year time horizon rather than a five-year one. None of this is tax advice, and the phase-out math depends on your specific household income, so it's worth a conversation with your accountant before you lean on it in an offer decision.
What this means if you're comparing towns right now
With Westchester's median single-family price up close to 20 percent year over year by some measures in early 2026, and inventory sitting under two months' supply in several recent readings, buyers are already competing hard on price. The tax line is one of the few places left where real, comparable numbers can still change the outcome of a decision between two towns.
Before you compare two listings by price per square foot, it's worth asking a few sharper questions:
- Who assesses this property: does the village run its own roll, or does it rely on the town's assessment?
- When was the assessment last updated, and does it reflect a value close to the current asking price or a figure from several years ago?
- What is the actual current tax bill, not an estimate, and how much of it is the school district portion?
- Does STAR apply here, and does it change based on your income or age? STAR only reduces the school tax portion of the bill, so it helps more in a district where school taxes dominate the total.
- Given your household income, does the 2026 SALT cap phase-out affect how much of a higher tax bill you'd actually get back at tax time?
None of these questions show up on a listing sheet. All of them show up on a closing statement.
A few direct questions
Does a lower list price always mean a lower total cost of ownership in Westchester? Not necessarily. A less expensive home in a self-assessing village with a high effective rate can carry a similar or higher annual tax bill than a pricier home in a lower-tax town. The rate and the assessment basis matter as much as the sale price.
Will the higher SALT cap last? Under current law, the $40,400 cap for 2026 rises roughly 1 percent annually through 2029, then reverts to $10,000 in 2030 unless Congress passes new legislation. Buyers planning to hold long term should factor that reversion into their math rather than assume the current cap is permanent.
Does STAR fix the gap between high-tax and low-tax towns? STAR reduces the school tax portion of a bill, and Basic STAR provides a $30,000 reduction in school taxable value for owners with income up to $500,000. It's a meaningful offset in a district where school taxes make up most of the bill, but it doesn't touch the county, town, village, or special district charges, so it narrows the gap rather than closing it.
Comparing Westchester towns on price alone was always an incomplete way to shop. In 2026, with the federal SALT math changed for the first time in years, it's also an incomplete way to budget. A conversation with an advisor who can walk through the actual current tax bill on a specific property, not a countywide average, is the difference between an estimate and a number you can plan around.
If you're weighing Westchester against a move within the city, or comparing towns within the county itself, Byson Real Estate Co. can help you run the real numbers property by property. Speak with a Byson advisor before you let a list price make the decision for you.
