6. Taxes and Carrying Cost

Section 2 explained why the tax figure on a Ridgewood listing sheet is not the tax a buyer will pay after 2027. This section covers the tax that owners pay now: what the 2025 bill is made of, who levies each piece, how it compares to neighboring towns, and what is already in motion for 2026 and 2027. All figures are from the New Jersey Division of Taxation, the Bergen County Board of Taxation, or the NJ Department of Education unless marked otherwise.

The 2025 bill, piece by piece

The 2025 general tax rate for Ridgewood is $2.890 per $100 of assessed value.¹¹ Applied to the Village’s average residential assessment of $712,672, that produces an average residential tax bill of $20,596.¹²

The total 2025 levy was $177,184,298, raised on a net taxable valuation of $6,133,035,300.¹³ It splits six ways:

Component rates are computed as levy divided by net taxable valuation; they sum to the certified 2.890. Dollar amounts on the average home are rounded.¹⁴

Three points follow from the table.

The Village Council controls about a quarter of the bill. The school district sets 62% of it through its own budget process, and the county sets 12%. A resident arguing about the municipal budget at Village Hall is arguing about $4,910 of a $20,596 bill.

The levy grew faster than the average bill. Ridgewood’s 2024 levy was approximately $170.1 million (2.869 rate on $5,930,301,800 net valuation).¹⁵ The 2025 levy of $177.2 million is a 4.1% increase. The average residential bill rose 1.1% over the same period ($20,375 to $20,596).¹⁶ The gap is explained by the ratable base, below.

The 2% levy cap is not a 2% ceiling on your bill. New Jersey’s cap allows exclusions for health benefits, pensions, debt service and capital, and permits banked cap from prior years. The school district’s 2026-27 general fund levy rose 4.0% ($107,392,191 to $111,687,878) under those adjustments.¹⁷ The Village’s own 2026 Budget Presentation states a 3.98% increase in the municipal tax levy, driven in part by a $1.3 million increase in employee healthcare and prescription costs.¹⁸ The adopted 2025 municipal levy was $42,256,311 and the 2024 levy $39,658,266, per the Village’s 2025 and 2024 budget presentations.¹⁹

The ratable base, and the hospital

Ridgewood’s tax base is residential. Multiplying the Class 2 line-item count by the average residential assessment gives approximately $5.30 billion of residential assessed value, or 86.5% of the $6.13 billion base.²⁰²¹ The remaining 13.5% is vacant land, commercial, industrial and apartment property combined.†

The practical meaning: there is almost no commercial base to absorb levy growth. When the levy rises, homeowners pay it.

The one exception was temporary. When The Valley Hospital moved its inpatient campus to Paramus in April 2024, the North Van Dien Avenue property lost its exemption and came onto the tax roll. Net taxable valuation grew from $5.93 billion (October 1, 2024) to $6.13 billion (October 1, 2025), a $203 million increase in a year with no revaluation.²²²³ That single ratable is why a 4.1% levy increase produced a 1.1% bill increase in 2025; the Village’s own 2025 budget commentary stated the municipal increase would have been roughly 6.6% without it.²⁴

On May 7, 2026, a judge ruled the Valley property exempt from taxation while its appeal is pending, under N.J.S.A. 54:3-27.²⁵ The assessed value at issue is reported as $184,103,600, which at the 2025 rate is about $5.32 million a year in taxes across all taxing entities, or 3.0% of the levy.²⁶ If the property leaves the roll permanently, that $5.32 million redistributes to every other owner: a 3.1% increase in everyone else’s share, before any budget growth. If the Village has already collected 2024 and 2025 taxes on it and loses, refunds with interest follow.†

What 2026 already looks like

2026 tax bills were mailed in August 2026 with a payment deadline extended to September 18. The Village reported the combined 2026 tax rate as 4.78% above 2025, with the municipal portion up 3.92%.²⁷ Applying 4.78% to the 2025 rate implies a 2026 general rate near $3.03 per $100, and an average bill near $21,600 on an unchanged average assessment.†

The school side is confirmed from primary documents: the 2026-27 total school levy is $114,713,852 (general fund plus $3,025,974 debt service), up 3.9% from $110,431,377.²⁸ Ridgewood voters also doubled the municipal open space tax from 0.5 cents to 1 cent per $100 on November 4, 2025 (5,299 yes to 3,666 no, 59.1%), adding about $36 to the average bill.²⁹

Effective tax rate: what a buyer actually pays

Because Ridgewood assessments sit well below market, the general tax rate overstates what a buyer pays as a share of price. The Division of Taxation publishes an effective tax rate (general rate multiplied by the equalization ratio) for exactly this purpose.

Ridgewood’s 2025 effective tax rate is 1.944% of true market value.³⁰

A buyer closing at the 2026 year-to-date median of $1,460,088 (Section 3) should therefore budget roughly $28,400 a year in property tax at market-equivalent rates, before the 2027 revaluation and before 2026 and 2027 levy growth. That is $2,365 a month. The listing sheet will typically show the seller’s bill, which averages $20,596 and reflects an assessment set in 2013.

Ridgewood against its neighbors

2025, New Jersey Division of Taxation³¹³²

*County effective rate computed as total county levy ($4,775,463,065) divided by county true value ($244,777,970,432).³³ “2027 reval” from the Bergen County Board of Taxation’s January 7, 2026 schedule.³⁴

2024, same sources³⁵³⁶

The unflattering reading is straightforward. Ridgewood has the highest average residential tax bill of the six towns, 45% above the Bergen County average and 58% above Wyckoff, a town with a comparable average sale price. Measured by effective rate, Ridgewood sits in the middle: below Glen Rock and Midland Park, above Ho-Ho-Kus, Wyckoff and Paramus, and roughly at the county figure. Paramus’s rate is a product of its commercial base (Route 17 and Route 4 retail), which Ridgewood does not have and cannot build.

Ridgewood’s effective rate fell from 2.024% to 1.944% between 2024 and 2025. That is not a tax cut. It is the arithmetic of prices rising faster than the levy: the true-value denominator grew 15% while the levy grew 4%.

The ratio history, and what it says about 2027

The Village’s last full revaluation was 2008, with a reassessment in 2013; before that, a revaluation in 2001 and a reassessment in 1993.³⁷ The Director’s Ratio since then shows the drift Section 2 describes.

³⁸

Two things to notice. The ratio held near 86% for four years, then fell 26 points in five, which is the 2021 to 2026 price run in Section 3 expressed as an assessment statistic. And the figure for tax year 2026 is 60.52%, not the 67.39% cited in Section 2; the Chapter 123 common level range for 2026 appeals is 51.44% to 69.60%.³⁹ Section 2’s rule of thumb should use 60.5% for any 2026 comparison: a home assessed below about 60% of what it would sell for is under-assessed relative to the Village average and should expect its share to rise in 2027.

At a 60.52% ratio, the 2027 revaluation will lift the aggregate assessment by roughly 65% and the general rate will fall proportionally, to somewhere near $1.85 per $100 on the 2025 levy. A lower rate on a higher assessment is the same bill for the average home. It is a different bill for the homes that have drifted.

Glen Rock, Wyckoff and Midland Park are on the same 2027 revaluation schedule; Ho-Ho-Kus and Paramus revalued for 2026.⁴⁰ Comparing 2027 rates across these towns will be more honest than it has been in a decade.

Tax appeals

The Division of Taxation publishes appeal statistics by county, not by municipality. For Bergen County in 2025: 189 assessments were revised, 88 affirmed, 377 withdrawn, 82 dismissed without prejudice, and 775 resolved by stipulation or dismissal with prejudice.⁴¹ Filings equal 0.42% of the county’s 253,428 residential line items. Total reductions were $473 million on $4.91 billion of assessed value appealed (9.6%), with commercial appeals (506 filings) driving most of the dollars. In 2024, Bergen had 1,918 filings (1,215 residential) and 206 revisions.⁴²†

The relevant point for 2026: with a ratio of 60.52%, a Ridgewood owner wins an appeal only by showing the assessment exceeds 69.60% of market value. In a market where sales run 111% of asking, that is a narrow door. Appeals on the current roll are largely a 2027 question.

Relief programs, as they apply here

Three state programs reduce the bill for eligible owners. All three are claimed on a single Form PAS-1; the deadline for the 2025 benefit year is November 2, 2026.⁴³

• ANCHOR (homeowners): $1,500 for NJ gross income of $150,000 or less; $1,000 for $150,001 to $250,000.⁴⁴
• Senior Freeze: age 65 or older (or on Social Security disability) by December 31, 2025; income $168,268 or less in 2024 and $172,475 or less in 2025; owned and occupied the home since December 31, 2022 or earlier. Reimburses increases above a base-year bill.⁴⁵
• Stay NJ: age 65 or older, income of $200,000 or less, owned and occupied for the full year. Maximum benefit $6,500 (income to $100,000), $5,000 ($100,000 to $150,000), $4,000 ($150,000 to $200,000). 2025 benefits are paid in February and May 2027.⁴⁶

Against a $20,596 average bill, ANCHOR is worth 5% to 7%. Stay NJ can be worth up to 32% for a qualifying senior. Buyers at Ridgewood’s 2026 price points, with the incomes those prices imply, will mostly qualify for none of them. The programs matter for the seller side: a long-tenured owner drawing Senior Freeze has a bill frozen at a base year, and the 2027 revaluation does not unfreeze it. That reduces one of the motivations to sell that Section 5 counts on for new supply.

What I tell my buyers: use 1.95% of your purchase price, not the number on the listing, as the tax line in your carrying-cost model, then add 4% to 5% a year for the next two years because that is what the school and Village levies are actually doing. On a $1.46 million purchase that is about $28,400 now and roughly $31,000 by 2028, before the revaluation redistributes it.

† Figures marked with a dagger are best-effort research, so verify them with the issuing office (the Village of Ridgewood, the school district, the county, the state or the utility) before making judgment calls or decisions on them.