Property Taxes in Bridgeport, CT
Connecticut taxes property through a municipal mill rate applied to 70% of assessed fair market value, with no county layer in between. Bridgeport's version of that system just went through a dramatic, real change -- and it has, until very recently, sat starkly apart from the low rates carried by the wealthy Sound-shore towns already covered on this site.
Connecticut's Mill-Rate System: No County, One Number Per Town
Every one of Connecticut's 169 municipalities, Bridgeport included, sets and collects its own property tax rate independently -- there is no county-level property tax administration in Connecticut, unlike the county-plus-town stacking common in the Carolinas and other states this site covers. The rate is expressed as a mill rate: dollars of tax owed per $1,000 of assessed value. State law (Conn. Gen. Stat. §12-62a) requires that assessed value equal 70% of a property's appraised fair market value, determined through a periodic town-wide revaluation -- so the mill rate is never applied to a home's full market price, only to 70% of its assessed fair market value.
That structure means two Connecticut towns with very different mill rates can produce similar or wildly different actual tax bills depending on both the rate and the underlying property values -- and Bridgeport is a genuinely instructive case for understanding why a mill rate alone doesn't tell the whole story, since it just experienced a large, real change in both halves of that equation within the same budget cycle.
The Rate That Just Fell by 40%
For fiscal year 2025-26, Bridgeport's real-and-personal-property mill rate was 43.45 mills -- a rate that put Bridgeport among the highest-taxed municipalities in Connecticut on a per-mill basis, well above the statewide average mill rate of roughly 28.22 mills cited elsewhere on this site's Connecticut coverage. For fiscal year 2026-27, Mayor Joe Ganim's approved budget cut that rate to 27.95 mills -- a roughly 40% reduction the city describes as its lowest mill rate in decades. The city's own reporting ties this cut directly to a citywide property revaluation that grew Bridgeport's total taxable grand list to roughly $13 billion (a reported 62.5% increase), meaning the rate cut is structured to prevent that higher assessed base from simply producing a matching tax-bill spike for every property owner, rather than representing a straightforward reduction in total city tax revenue.
Motor vehicles are taxed separately from real and personal property under Connecticut's statewide system: Bridgeport's motor-vehicle mill rate is 31.75 mills for FY2026-27 (down slightly from 32.46 mills the prior year), close to the statutory cap Connecticut law applies to motor-vehicle mill rates across every municipality in the state. A Bridgeport property owner should expect two separate mill rates on two separate tax bills -- one for the real estate itself, a different one for any vehicles registered at that address.
What This Rate Change Does and Does Not Mean for a Specific Bill
A 40% mill-rate cut sounds like an unambiguous tax cut, and for many properties it likely is one in practical terms -- but it is not automatically true for every single parcel, and this page is careful not to overstate it. Because the mill-rate cut arrived in the same cycle as a citywide revaluation that raised assessed values across the grand list, a property whose own assessed value rose by more than the roughly 40% the mill rate fell could still see its actual dollar tax bill increase, even though the headline rate dropped sharply. This is the same structural dynamic seen in other Connecticut and North Carolina markets covered on this site when a revaluation and a rate cut land in the same budget year: the rate change and the value change have to be evaluated together, on the specific property, not treated as independent facts.
For a concrete illustration: a home carrying $200,000 in assessed value (about $286,000 in fair market value at Connecticut's 70% ratio) owed roughly $8,690 at the prior 43.45-mill rate and would owe roughly $5,590 at the new 27.95-mill rate if its assessed value stayed flat -- a real, substantial reduction. But if that same home's assessed value rose meaningfully in the revaluation that triggered the rate cut in the first place, the actual bill could land somewhere between those two figures, or even above the prior year's bill, depending on how much the specific assessment increased. Confirm a property's current, post-revaluation assessed value directly with the City of Bridgeport Tax Assessor's Office -- this is not something a listing sheet's estimated-taxes line reliably reflects.
An Honest Comparison to Greenwich, Stamford, and Darien
This site's coverage of Greenwich, Stamford, and Darien documented meaningfully lower mill rates in each of those wealthier Sound-shore towns: Greenwich's FY2025-26 rate was 12.041 mills -- among the lowest in Connecticut -- Darien's rate was 16.05 mills, and Stamford's FY2026 rate was 23.27 mills, itself already below the statewide average. Bridgeport's now-superseded 43.45-mill rate ran roughly 3.6 times Greenwich's rate and nearly 2 times Stamford's; the new 27.95-mill rate narrows that gap to roughly 2.3 times Greenwich's and slightly above Stamford's, still the highest of the group but a real, current, and honestly documented improvement rather than a static, permanent disparity.
That gap does not mean a Bridgeport property owner pays more in absolute dollars than a Greenwich or Stamford owner -- the opposite is usually true, because Bridgeport's assessed values run far lower than those wealthier towns' assessed values. A low mill rate applied to an extremely high assessed value (Greenwich) can produce a larger dollar bill than a higher mill rate applied to a modest assessed value (Bridgeport). This page states both halves of that relationship honestly rather than implying Bridgeport residents face a heavier absolute tax burden than their wealthier Sound-shore neighbors, since the mill rate alone doesn't establish that -- the assessed value matters just as much, and Bridgeport's assessed values are, on average, dramatically lower.
Assessment, Appeals, and What to Confirm Before Closing
Connecticut's 70%-of-fair-market-value assessment rule is set by state statute and applies uniformly to Bridgeport just as it does to every other Connecticut town -- it is not a local Bridgeport policy choice. A property owner who believes their post-revaluation assessment is inaccurate has the right to appeal to the local Board of Assessment Appeals within the window the city publishes each year; this page does not have confirmed, current Bridgeport-specific appeal deadlines or procedures and recommends confirming that directly with the City of Bridgeport Tax Assessor's Office rather than assuming a generic statewide timeline applies without local variation.
Before making an offer in Bridgeport, confirm three things directly with the Tax Assessor's Office: the property's current, post-revaluation assessed value; the exact FY2026-27 mill rate applicable to that property class (27.95 mills for real estate, a separate rate for any personal property); and whether any additional special-district or fire-district levy applies to that specific parcel, since this page did not find confirmed evidence of a Norwalk-style multi-taxing-district system in Bridgeport but also did not exhaustively rule one out for every neighborhood.
What This Page Does Not Know
This page does not have a confirmed, current post-revaluation assessed value for any specific Bridgeport property, since that varies parcel by parcel and depends on the individual reassessment. It also does not have confirmed current Board of Assessment Appeals deadlines or procedures specific to Bridgeport, a confirmed breakdown of how much the FY2026-27 revaluation raised assessed values in Black Rock specifically versus the city as a whole, or a confirmed comparison of Bridgeport's effective tax rate (mill rate applied to actual, not assessed, value) against every other Connecticut Sound-shore town in a single reconciled table.
For a specific property, get the current assessed value and applicable mill rate in writing from the City of Bridgeport Tax Assessor's Office, and have a Connecticut-licensed real estate attorney or a Bridgeport-focused buyer's agent confirm there is no additional special-district levy before closing. Nothing on this page is tax or legal advice.
Ready to talk to a local Bridgeport / Black Rock agent?
Get a Free Agent Referral →Independent research. No ads. No sponsored listings. Data sourced from: the City of Bridgeport's own website (bridgeportct.gov) for FY2026-27 mill rate figures; Patch's and DoingItLocal's reporting on Mayor Ganim's FY2026-27 budget, the 40% mill-rate reduction, and the roughly $13 billion revalued grand list; Connecticut General Statutes §12-62a for the statewide 70%-of-fair-market-value assessment rule; and this site's own independently sourced Greenwich (FY2025-26, 12.041 mills), Stamford (FY2026, 23.27 mills), and Darien (16.05 mills) property-tax pages, used here strictly as a comparison point with each figure sourced on its own page. The statewide average mill rate figure (~28.22 mills) is cited from the Connecticut Office of Policy and Management data referenced on this site's Stamford page. Facts not independently confirmed and not invented here include: a specific property's current post-revaluation assessed value; current Board of Assessment Appeals deadlines and procedures specific to Bridgeport; a neighborhood-level (Black Rock versus citywide) breakdown of how much the FY2026-27 revaluation raised assessed values; and whether any Bridgeport neighborhood carries an additional special taxing-district levy on top of the general city rate. Confirm all current figures directly with the City of Bridgeport Tax Assessor's Office and a Connecticut-licensed real estate attorney before making a purchase decision. Nothing on this page is legal, tax, or financial advice.