…with sales pushing a big reset on property values, are regional governments and taxing districts experiencing those losses.
Portland’s plummeting office building values are sending them into a state of tax “compression.” Oregon voters mostly decoupled property taxes from market values in a 1990s ballot measure, then hoping to insulate their tax bills from soaring home prices. But they also established tax caps that are functions of a property’s market value — and when values sink far enough, then assessors “compress” the amount they collect.
Property tax losses from compression in Multnomah County exceeded $130 million in the 2024 tax year, increasing 22% from the prior year. That exploded from the $78 million in such losses in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Until Portland and Multnomah County get serious about tackling crime, this will continue.
…The growing tax losses are yet another way Portland, still wallowing in a social and economic slump, is behind other cities five years after COVID-19. Population growth here has lagged other U.S. metros since 2020, and job growth has only slowly recovered.
Winners are emerging in places like New York, where the total assessed value for office buildings rose marginally in the upcoming tax roll, driven by strong leasing, according to reporting in The City. Seattle, like Portland, has struggled to regain leasing momentum post-pandemic, dampening the property tax revenue generated by its downtown office buildings.
Why might this be? Well lets look at crime in New York City:
New York City saw the fewest shootings throughout 2025 since the NYPD began recording crime statistics in 1994, alongside a nearly two-year decline in the citywide crime rate, the mayor’s office and NYPD announced Monday.
The city has recorded 412 shooting incidents in 2025, lower than the previous record of 426 in the first seven months of 2017, according to preliminary NYPD data. Compared with July 2024, major crime across five of seven categories — murder, robbery, assault, burglary and grand larceny — decreased, with total crime dropping 5.6%.
Huh. Weird, right?
New York has similarly craze high taxes (which have driven many to New Jersey), so Portland and Seattle’s nutty tax burden can’t be the answer. It’s all about public safety. Almost all social goods one might want to achieve are downstream of that.