Brunswick & Harpswell, ME Property Tax: $13.22 vs $6.36

Two Mill Rates That Look Nothing Alike

Brunswick's municipal mill rate for FY2025–2026 is $13.22 per $1,000 of assessed value, assessed at a 100% ratio, per mainerealestate.com's compiled "Property Taxes by Town" table. Harpswell's 2024 mill rate is $6.36 per $1,000 — up from $6.10 in 2023, a 4.3% increase — per the Harpswell Anchor's August 2024 reporting on the town's own tax commitment.

Side by side, Harpswell's rate is less than half of Brunswick's. A reader who stops there would reasonably conclude Harpswell is the far cheaper town to own property in. That conclusion would be wrong, or at least badly incomplete, and this page exists mainly to explain why before anyone makes a buying decision on the strength of that one number.

Why Harpswell's Low Rate Is Not What It Looks Like

Harpswell has not conducted a full townwide property revaluation since 2005 — a full 20 years during which real estate values moved on without the town's own assessment records catching up. A mill rate only means something in relation to the assessed values it is applied to, and Harpswell's assessed values are, by the town's own admission, two decades stale.

The town is now in the middle of correcting this. In September 2024, Harpswell approved a $394,000 contract with Vision Government Solutions to conduct its first full revaluation in twenty years. Field inspections began in March 2025, per the Harpswell Anchor, with the full process expected to take over a year. The first tax bills reflecting the new, updated valuations are due in August 2026 — meaning any buyer closing on a Harpswell property now should expect their tax picture to change within the following year.

Vision's own project manager estimated that Harpswell property values have "at least doubled" since 2005. Select Board member David Chipman has publicly predicted that the nominal mill rate will likely fall sharply once the revaluation is complete — but he also cautioned that the actual dollar tax burden on any given property may not drop proportionally, and could rise for some owners even as the headline rate falls. Do not read Harpswell's $6.36 rate as evidence the town simply taxes property lightly. It reflects an assessment base that is roughly two decades out of date, not a genuinely lower real-terms tax burden — and that picture is actively changing as of this writing.

What Owners Actually Pay Today

Applying each town's current rate to Zillow's own Home Value Index (both as of a January 31, 2026 snapshot) makes the practical gap visible. Brunswick's typical home value of $470,611 at the $13.22 rate works out to roughly $6,221 a year in municipal tax. Harpswell's typical home value of $685,196 at the $6.36 rate works out to roughly $4,358 a year — using the Census Bureau's 2024 ACS median home value of $609,700 instead produces roughly $3,878 a year.

In other words, even though Harpswell's typical home is worth meaningfully more than Brunswick's on Zillow's index, its owner still likely pays noticeably less in dollar property tax today. That gap is a direct product of Harpswell's stale, sub-market assessed values, not evidence that Harpswell values or taxes homes for less in any real sense. These figures are simple illustrative multiplications against townwide index values, not real tax bills for any specific parcel — the actual assessed value the Town of Harpswell or Town of Brunswick has on file for a given address, multiplied by the town's official current rate, is what matters for any real transaction.

What Happens After Harpswell's Revaluation

If Harpswell's assessed values are updated to reflect the "at least doubled since 2005" estimate, and the town's total revenue need stays roughly stable (the general intent of a revaluation, illustrated by Portland, Maine's own recent 2025-into-2026 revaluation cycle, covered separately on this site), a rough illustrative expectation is that the nominal mill rate could fall by something on the order of half — potentially toward a $3 to $3.50 per $1,000 range — even as many owners' actual dollar bills land close to, or above, what they pay today.

This is this page's own illustrative estimate, not a number published by the Town of Harpswell. No official post-revaluation mill-rate projection had been published as of this writing, and Select Board member Chipman's own caution applies directly here: the real outcome for any specific property depends on how much that property's value grew relative to the townwide average, not on the townwide average alone. The safest planning assumption for a prospective Harpswell buyer is to budget against the property's likely current market value, not its pre-revaluation assessed value, when estimating tax exposure for 2026 and beyond.

Brunswick's Rate in Regional Context

Brunswick's $13.22 rate sits in a similar range to some of its Cumberland County neighbors — mainerealestate.com's same compiled table shows Falmouth and Freeport both at $13.85 — while Cumberland runs far higher at $25.18. No comparable multi-decade stale-assessment gap has been documented for Brunswick in the sourcing available for this page, so Brunswick's rate can be read at closer to face value than Harpswell's can, though a buyer should still confirm the town's most current rate directly before relying on it.

A Genuine, Unresolved Gap in Brunswick's Own Home-Price Data

Separately from the mill-rate picture, Brunswick's own current home-price data has a real, unreconciled discrepancy worth flagging rather than glossing over. Zillow's Home Value Index puts Brunswick's typical home value at $470,611, up just 0.1% year-over-year, as of a January 31, 2026 snapshot, with 41 active listings.

Redfin's own city page, by contrast, reported a median sale price of just $326,000 in November 2025 — down a startling 18.5% year-over-year, on only 16 homes sold (versus 20 the prior year), with 29 days on market (up from 19). Movoto's Redfin-sourced market-trends page reported a very different June 2026 median sale price of $690,000, on 89 homes sold, up 9.9% in volume from 81 a year earlier, with 31 days on market.

Those last two figures are both nominally Redfin-derived, yet differ by more than double. The most likely explanation is that November's sample was small and possibly seasonally skewed (just 16 sales) compared with June's much larger 89-sale sample, but this could not be fully reconciled. Do not average these numbers or treat either one alone as Brunswick's current median home price — pull a fresh, dated figure directly from Redfin before relying on a specific number for a real transaction.

What This Page Could Not Confirm

A few gaps here should be verified directly rather than assumed. Village-level real-estate and tax sub-market data for Bailey Island, Orr's Island, and Cundy's Harbor — distinct from Harpswell's townwide figures — was not independently confirmed for this page. No official, town-published post-revaluation mill-rate projection exists yet for Harpswell; the $3 to $3.50 range above is this page's own illustrative extrapolation, not a town estimate. And Brunswick's own reconciled current median home price remains genuinely unsettled given the Zillow, Redfin, and Movoto divergence described above. None of these gaps should be filled with an assumed number — verify current rates and assessed values directly with the Town of Brunswick's or Town of Harpswell's own assessing office, Maine Revenue Services, and a current Redfin or Zillow pull, and consult a Maine-licensed tax professional or real estate attorney before making a purchase decision based on property tax exposure.