Property Taxes in Bandon: How Oregon's System Actually Works

The Core Mechanic: Assessed Value Doesn't Reset When a Property Sells

Oregon Ballot Measure 50, approved by voters in 1997, fundamentally restructured how Oregon taxes property. It set every property's baseline "maximum assessed value" (MAV) at 90% of its 1995-96 real market value, and it capped how fast that MAV can grow going forward: 3% per year, plus the value of any new construction, additions, or major remodeling added on top. So far, that sounds a lot like California's Prop 13. The critical difference is what happens at a sale: in California, a property's assessed value resets to the purchase price when it changes hands. In Oregon, it does not. A Bandon property's assessed value keeps climbing along its own capped 3%-a-year trajectory regardless of who owns it or what they paid, which means a buyer who just closed at full current market price can end up with an assessed value -- and therefore a tax bill -- that looks nothing like the purchase price would suggest.

The practical result: two nearly identical Bandon homes, purchased at similar prices in different years, can carry meaningfully different property tax bills, because each one's assessed value has been compounding at 3% a year from a different historical starting point rather than resetting at the more recent sale. A buyer should ask specifically for the seller's current assessed value (not just the listing price) and get a realistic projection of what the tax bill will look like going forward under Oregon's compounding rule, rather than assuming the tax bill will track the purchase price the way it might in a reset-on-sale state.

Measure 5: The Overall Rate Ceiling

A second, older law layers on top of Measure 50's assessed-value mechanics. Ballot Measure 5, passed in 1990, caps the total amount of property tax that can be collected from any one property, expressed against its real market value (not the capped assessed value): $10 per $1,000 of real market value for general government purposes, and $5 per $1,000 for education, a combined ceiling of $15 per $1,000 of real market value. When a property's various overlapping tax levies -- city, county, school district, fire district, any local bonds -- would add up to more than that ceiling, the state requires local governments to reduce collections proportionally through a process called "compression." In practice, this mostly acts as a backstop against extreme total tax burdens rather than something most typical Bandon homeowners will notice directly, but it's part of why Oregon's overall system, while unusual, tends to produce comparatively moderate effective tax rates.

Bandon and Coos County's Actual Rates

Historical reporting put Bandon's own city-only permanent property tax rate at roughly 46 cents per $1,000 of assessed value as of 2013 -- described at the time as notably lower than other full-service cities in Coos County. Including voter-approved bonds and a local option street tax, Bandon's combined city-level rate was reported near $1.77 per $1,000 of assessed value in that same period. Those numbers are now well over a decade old and should not be treated as current without verification. More recent third-party aggregator data (Ownwell) puts Coos County's overall median effective property tax rate around 0.68% -- notably below the roughly 1.02% national median -- and separately describes Bandon's rate as aligning near Oregon's statewide median of about 0.45%, though this page treats that framing as directional rather than a precisely sourced current figure.

None of these figures represents the full combined bill on a specific Bandon property, which also includes county general government, the Bandon School District, and any applicable fire district or other special-district levies layered on top of the city's own rate. The City of Bandon's own current annual budget document (covering fiscal year July 2025 through June 2026) is the most direct primary source for the city's current rate; the Coos County Assessor's Office is the authoritative source for the full combined bill on any specific parcel.

No State Sales Tax: The Trade That Funds a Different System

Oregon is one of only five states in the country with no general state sales tax at all, alongside Alaska, Delaware, Montana, and New Hampshire. That's a real, ongoing benefit for anyone buying furniture, materials, vehicles, or virtually anything else locally -- there's simply no sales tax line item added at checkout, a genuine and durable structural difference from most other coastal real estate markets. Oregon funds state government instead primarily through a state income tax, which matters most for buyers who will also earn income in-state (as opposed to a second-home owner whose primary income is taxed elsewhere) -- worth running through an accountant familiar with Oregon's specific rules before assuming the no-sales-tax benefit is a clean net win for a given household's finances.

New Construction, Remodels, and Reassessment

Because Measure 50's 3%-a-year cap applies to a property's existing assessed value, new construction, substantial additions, and some major remodeling get valued and added to the assessment roll separately, at their own market value, rather than simply riding the old cap. A buyer planning a significant renovation or teardown-rebuild on a Bandon lot should ask the Coos County Assessor's Office specifically how the added value from that project will be assessed and phased in, since it will not simply be absorbed into the 3%-a-year growth ceiling the way ordinary appreciation is.

What This Page Doesn't Cover

This page explains the real mechanics of Oregon's Measure 5 and Measure 50 property tax system and how it differs structurally from a reset-on-sale system like California's Prop 13. It does not state the exact current combined tax rate or dollar bill for any specific Bandon parcel, because that number depends on the property's exact assessed value history, its zoning and any applicable special districts, and the current fiscal-year rates set by the city, county, and school district. Pull the current tax statement for any specific property directly from the Coos County Assessor's Office, and confirm the mechanics of any planned renovation's reassessment before budgeting. Nothing on this page is tax or legal advice.