Old Orchard Beach Property Tax: What Owners Actually Pay

A Small, Dense, Tourism-Economy Town — One Rate for the Whole Thing

Old Orchard Beach was set off from the Town of Saco and incorporated on its own on February 20, 1883. It is genuinely small and genuinely dense by land area: 22.53 square miles of total town area, but only 7.43 square miles of that is land, with the remaining 15.10 square miles being water — a fraction of Wells's 73.61 square miles of land a few miles south. The town's year-round population was 8,960 at the 2020 Census, with a 2025 Census Bureau vintage estimate of 9,533. Every parcel in town, whether it sits near the Pier, in the Ocean Park neighborhood, or well back from the water, is taxed under that same single town-wide rate — there is no second taxing entity to research separately.

The FY2025 Mil Rate: $11.33 per $1,000 — a Number That Needs a Current-Year Check

The most specific, sourced figure available for OOB's mil rate is $11.33 per $1,000 of assessed value, set in the town's FY2025 budget proposal and reported by the Portland Press Herald on April 3, 2024. That was a slight decrease from FY2024's $11.40, and the same article noted the final rate could still shift pending a completed property reassessment. This page is intentionally not presenting that number as this year's rate. It is the most recent figure this research turned up, from a budget cycle that closed out over a year ago, and a buyer or owner should confirm the actual current mil rate directly with the Town of Old Orchard Beach's assessing office before using it in any purchase decision.

What that figure does establish clearly is a comparison point against Wells, the next town south, which is already covered on this site. Wells's own tax-information page puts its FY2025-2026 rate at $6.46 per $1,000 of valuation. Set the two side by side and OOB's FY2025 rate of $11.33 runs at nearly double Wells's rate — a real, meaningfully different tax structure between two towns that share a stretch of Maine coastline, even accounting for the fact that the two figures come from slightly different fiscal-year cycles.

Why Property Tax Carries So Much Weight in a Town This Size

A mil rate roughly double a neighboring town's is worth putting in context, and OOB's context is genuinely distinctive: this is a town whose economy runs overwhelmingly on tourism rather than a large year-round population. Against roughly 9,500 year-round residents, OOB's 2022 accommodation and food-services sales came to $104.7 million, with total retail sales of $50.6 million, per Census Bureau QuickFacts economic data — very large figures for a town this size. Much of the tax base that funds the town budget is not ordinary owner-occupied housing at all: it includes the Pier, Palace Playland (a beachfront amusement park operating on the same site since 1902), a concentration of hotels, motels, and campgrounds, and roughly 800 active short-term rentals operating in town with no cap, per WGME's October 2023 reporting on the Town Council's rejection of a proposed short-term-rental moratorium. A seasonal, tourism-and-rental-heavy tax base funding year-round municipal services is a real structural reason a small town like OOB can carry a comparatively high mil rate — a fuller look at how those roughly 800 short-term rentals fit into the town's housing and investment picture belongs on this site's vacation-rental-investment page for OOB, not here.

The Part an NH Buyer Will Miss: Maine Has a State Income Tax

This is the single most important structural point for anyone cross-shopping OOB against this site's New Hampshire Seacoast towns. New Hampshire has no state income tax on wages and salaries and no general state sales tax, so property tax there functions as close to the entire state-and-local tax picture for a homeowner. Maine does not work that way. Maine levies a real state personal income tax on top of property tax, applying to wage income, retirement income, and other earnings regardless of what any single town's mil rate happens to be. That means a straight mil-rate-to-mil-rate comparison between OOB and an NH coastal town does not tell the whole tax-burden story in either direction — it only compares the property-tax line item, not a household's total state and local tax exposure. This page does not attempt to size that income-tax impact in dollar terms, since it depends entirely on a specific household's income and filing situation; that calculation belongs with a Maine-licensed tax professional, not a town mil rate.

What OOB's FY2025 Rate Would Mean Against Current Home Values

Running the FY2025 mil rate against OOB's current home-value benchmarks is illustrative only, not a real tax bill for any specific parcel. Zillow's Home Value Index puts OOB's typical home value at $507,308 (April 30, 2026 snapshot); at $11.33 per $1,000, that would work out to roughly $5,748 per year, if that rate still held. The Census Bureau's American Community Survey figure for OOB's median home value, a separate and more conservative measure, is $366,600, which would work out to roughly $4,154 per year at the same rate. Neither figure is OOB's actual assessed value for a given property, and neither uses a confirmed current-year rate — an individual parcel's own assessed value from its current tax card, multiplied by the town's confirmed current mil rate, is the only number that matters for an actual purchase decision.

OOB Is the Most Attainable of the Maine Markets This Site Covers

Whatever the current mil rate turns out to be, OOB's underlying home values are the lowest of the four Maine coastal markets this site covers. Zillow's Home Value Index puts OOB's typical home value at $507,308, against Wells's $578,907 and Kennebunkport's $1,122,864 — meaning OOB runs roughly 12 to 14 percent cheaper than Wells on a like-for-like typical-value basis, and far below Kennebunkport. Redfin's more recent figures corroborate the general price level: a median sale price of $508,500 as of November 2025, up 10.5% year over year. A lower purchase price is a real, separate factor from the mil rate itself in sizing an eventual tax bill — a comparatively high rate applied to a comparatively lower home value does not automatically produce a comparatively high dollar tax bill, which is exactly why running the actual math on a specific property matters more than comparing rates alone.

What This Page Could Not Confirm

Several things here should be checked directly rather than assumed. The current (FY2026-27) mil rate is not confirmed on this page; the $11.33 figure is from the FY2025 budget cycle and needs a direct check with the Town of Old Orchard Beach's assessing office. No parcel-level breakdown of FEMA flood-zone designations (VE versus AE) for OOB was obtained for this page, so no claim is made here about how flood-zone status might affect assessed values or insurance costs at specific OOB addresses. No confirmed short-term-rental or investment-property price premium, and no confirmed oceanfront-versus-inland assessed-value differential, was found for OOB during this research. Finally, the exact dollar impact of Maine's state income tax on any specific household's total tax burden depends on that household's own income and filing situation and was not modeled here. Verify all of the above directly with the Town of Old Orchard Beach's assessing office (oobmaine.com), Maine Revenue Services, and a Maine-licensed tax professional or real estate attorney before making a purchase decision based on tax exposure.