Cape Elizabeth Property Tax: The $11.00 Rate Explained

One Town, One Rate — No Village-District Layer

Cape Elizabeth is a compact town — only 14.70 of its 45.93 square miles are land, with the rest being water — but it still spans a real range of character, from the Portland Head Light and Fort Williams Park area near South Portland to the Two Lights headland and Crescent Beach State Park closer to the Scarborough line. Despite that range, all of it is taxed as one municipality under one assessing office. A buyer weighing a home near the lighthouse museum against one closer to Crescent Beach is looking at the same mil rate either way; there is no lighthouse-district or beach-district premium or discount layered on top. That is a structural fact about how Maine towns are organized, not a data gap specific to Cape Elizabeth.

The Confirmed FY2025 Rate, and Why FY2026's Final Number Isn't Settled Here

Cape Elizabeth's FY2025 mil rate was $11.00 per $1,000 of assessed valuation, per mainerealestate.com's Property Taxes by Town comparison — a genuinely competitive figure among greater-Portland towns, sitting just below Scarborough's $11.33 and well below Portland's rate. What this page cannot do is hand you a single, finalized FY2026 rate: that figure was not independently confirmed during this research, and a direct fetch of the town's own assessing page did not succeed this session. What is confirmed instead is a separate, reported estimate that FY2026's property tax bills are headed roughly 4.85 to 4.9% higher than the prior year, driven by the budget story below. Those are two different things — a locked-in FY2025 rate, and an estimated FY2026 percentage increase, not yet a locked-in FY2026 rate — and this page treats them accordingly rather than blending them into one invented number.

Before making any purchase decision, verify the current, finalized rate and the town's current assessment ratio directly at capeelizabeth.gov/departments/assessing/general_tax_information.php.

The FY2026 Budget Story Behind the Increase

The Portland Press Herald reported on March 19, 2025 (Cape Elizabeth's proposed municipal budget packs 4.9% tax increase) that the town's proposed FY2026 municipal budget was $19.55 million, roughly $871,000 — 4.67% — higher than the prior year, and that the increase was projected to drive an estimated 4.85 to 4.9% rise in property taxes. Town Manager Patrick Fox is quoted in that coverage. Several specific drivers stand out: the town chose not to draw down its unassigned fund balance this budget cycle, after drawing $850,000 from reserves the prior year; the budget includes a new $200,000 senior property-tax-relief allocation; and new taxable property value grew by only $5 million, or 0.13%, meaning almost none of the increase is being offset by growth in the tax base.

The same reporting notes that Cape Elizabeth's unassigned fund balance sits at just 6% of the overall budget, below a recommended 12.5% policy target — and frames the town's underlying structural challenge as having a very small commercial tax base and very limited growth year to year. That last point matters for anyone comparing Cape Elizabeth to towns with more commercial or new-construction tax base to spread costs across: Cape Elizabeth's tax bill increases fall almost entirely on existing residential property owners.

How Cape Elizabeth's Rate Compares Across the Coast — and Why a Lower Rate Elsewhere Isn't a Lower Bill

Per mainerealestate.com's FY2025-2026 comparison table (per $1,000 of assessed value): Cape Elizabeth $11.00, Scarborough $11.33, Portland $11.98 post-revaluation (Portland's own FY2025 rate was $15.01 before that revaluation), Old Orchard Beach roughly $10.30, Wells $6.46, Kennebunkport $6.88, and Ogunquit $6.73. Read quickly, that table makes the York County beach towns — Wells, Kennebunkport, Ogunquit — look like the cheapest places to own property on the Maine coast. That reading is incomplete.

Wells assesses at 100% of value, while Kennebunkport and Ogunquit assess at 90%, and all three carry meaningfully higher underlying property values than their nominal mil rates might suggest — a lower rate applied to a higher assessed value can still produce a comparable, or larger, actual tax bill. A low mil rate reflects a larger base of expensive property generating more tax revenue per mill, not a lower real tax burden. On top of that, Maine levies a real state personal income tax on wage, retirement, and other income, on top of whatever a given town's mil rate happens to be — a structure unlike, say, New Hampshire's. A buyer moving from a no-income-tax or low-property-tax state should not treat a favorable-looking mil rate comparison across these towns as the whole picture of what living in Cape Elizabeth, or any of its Maine neighbors, will actually cost in combined state and local tax.

Assessment Ratio: A Real Gap This Research Could Not Close

Cape Elizabeth's own current assessment ratio — the percentage of full market value at which the town assesses property for tax purposes — was not independently confirmed during this research. A direct attempt to fetch the town's own tax-information page did not succeed this session. That matters because, as the comparison above shows, the assessment ratio changes what a nominal mil rate actually means: a 90% assessment ratio effectively lowers the real tax burden relative to the stated rate, while a 100% ratio does not. Rather than guess at Cape Elizabeth's ratio or assume it matches a neighboring town, verify it directly at capeelizabeth.gov/departments/assessing/general_tax_information.php before using this page's rate comparisons to estimate an actual bill.

Running the Rate Against Cape Elizabeth's Home Values

Applying Cape Elizabeth's FY2025 rate to its current home-value benchmarks is illustrative only, not a real tax bill for any specific parcel. Zillow's Home Value Index put Cape Elizabeth's typical home value at $894,401 as of a May 31, 2026 snapshot, up 1.9% year-over-year; at $11.00 per $1,000, that would work out to roughly $9,838 per year, if that exact rate and value still apply to the parcel in question. For comparison, Census/ACS data (2020-2024 estimate) puts Cape Elizabeth's median home value at $731,600 — a lower figure than Zillow's live index, reflecting the usual gap between a lagging survey-based estimate and a current market index, not a contradiction.

Cape Elizabeth's home values also run well above Portland's own: Portland's Zillow ZHVI was $566,265 as of the same snapshot date, actually down 0.9% year-over-year, meaning Cape Elizabeth's typical home value is roughly 58% higher than Portland's despite sitting directly across the harbor mouth. That gap, not a dramatically different tax rate, is the bigger driver of why a Cape Elizabeth property tax bill tends to run higher in dollar terms than a comparable Portland one.

A Wealthy Town With a Thin Commercial Tax Base

Cape Elizabeth's median household income was $145,821 (2020-2024 ACS, via Census QuickFacts), and the town has historically been described as the wealthiest Portland suburb in Maine. A January 15, 2025 Portland Press Herald report (Census suggests a new richest Portland suburb, fewer French Mainers) found that Cumberland, ME had newly overtaken Cape Elizabeth, posting a median household income of $154,375 — so Cape Elizabeth should be described as one of Maine's wealthiest towns and historically the wealthiest Portland suburb, not as the single current wealthiest.

That wealth sits alongside the structural tax-base problem described above: a very small commercial tax base and very limited year-to-year growth in new taxable property value, per the same Portland Press Herald FY2026 budget reporting. In practice, that means Cape Elizabeth's comparatively high home values, not a large commercial or new-construction tax base, are what fund the town's budget — a genuinely different dynamic than a town with a diversified commercial base to spread costs across.

What This Page Could Not Confirm

Several things here should be verified directly rather than assumed. Cape Elizabeth's own current assessment ratio was not confirmed this session — check capeelizabeth.gov/departments/assessing/general_tax_information.php directly. The town's finalized FY2026 mil rate, as opposed to the confirmed FY2025 $11.00 figure and the separately reported ~4.85-4.9% increase estimate, was not confirmed as a single final number this session. The exact dollar impact of Maine's state income tax on any specific household's total tax burden depends entirely on that household's own income and filing situation and was not modeled here. Verify all of the above directly with the Town of Cape Elizabeth's assessing office, Maine Revenue Services, and a Maine-licensed tax professional or real estate attorney before making a purchase decision based on tax exposure.