In most jurisdictions, apartments are treated as commercial real estate, which is taxed at higher rates than single-family houses in most states. Although there are many complications in such comparisons, one simple approach is to look at the “effective tax rate,” defined as the ratio of property tax to property value.
In 2012, on a national basis, tax disparities between commercial and single-family properties jumped to an all-time high, from 1.707 to 1.791, after declining for three years in a row - meaning that the effective tax rate on $1 million commercial properties nationwide is, on average, 79.1% higher than the effective tax rate on median-valued homes.
Tax disparities for “classified” locations where residential and commercial property are treated differently in statute, also jumped considerably, to 2.045 - which is just above the recent high of 2.043 in 2008 and second only to the 2.075 figure seen in 1998. The increase in the classification ratio - a 4.9% increase nationwide and a 7.3% increase in the locations where residential preferences are written into law, indicates that states (and where allowed, local governments) are providing greater subsidies to homeowners.
Table 20 (page 11 in the report) shows the classification ratio for apartments versus homes, which provides another use finding - the degree of subsidy provided to homeowners at the expense of renters.