Ohio has long been considered a capital of home affordability—but, when it comes to property taxes, the picture is far less rosy.
The Buckeye State ranks 16th in affordability, with a median list price of $269,130, according to state-by-state report cards by the economics team at Realtor.com®.
But Ohio ranks eighth in the nation for property taxes paid as a percentage of home value, according to the Tax Foundation—and for many homeowners, those bills are rising fast.
“When I got my property tax reevaluation last year, I opened the envelope up and hit the floor,” says Beth Blackmarr, a resident of Lakewood and spokesperson of a group organizing to abolish property taxes in Ohio. “Panic.”
Her home’s assessed value had jumped 51.9%, triggering a massive tax hike. In searching for answers, she found Keith Davey, founder of Save Our Seniors, a grass-roots group focused on protecting elderly homeowners from being priced out of their homes.
Together, they launched Citizens for Property Tax Reform—now leading a statewide push for a constitutional amendment that would abolish property taxes in Ohio. And their movement is gaining steam.
The breaking point
In Ohio, state-mandated property reappraisals occur every six years. But in 2024, homeowners in Northeast Ohio—especially around Cleveland—have been hit with staggering valuation increases.
In Cuyahoga County, where Cleveland is located, residential property values rose by an average of 32%, according to official reappraisal data. But that spike follows years of steady growth.
Since 2018, the median sales price in Cleveland has climbed by more than $70,000, a 50.4% increase. Statewide, the jump is even steeper—$82,977, or 58.2%, over the same period, according to an analysis by Realtor.com.
And the timing couldn’t be worse. In some districts, voters also recently passed new tax levies to help stave off cuts to the Cleveland Metropolitan School District.
The combination was the final straw, according to Blackmarr.
“Some of [our members] are paying more in property taxes than they were for their original mortgage,” she says.
Why abolish property taxes entirely?
To outsiders, the call to abolish property taxes by constitutional amendment might seem like a radical first step. But for the members of Citizens for Property Tax Reform, it’s the result of years of mounting frustration and failed legislative efforts.
“This is an action of last resort,” says Blackmarr. “We have talked and talked and talked and talked with legislators.”
In 2024 alone, Blackmarr said the Ohio Legislature introduced “better than 40 bills” aimed at reforming property taxes. “And none of them made it to the end line where they got the governor’s signature on it.”
Instead, she says, lawmakers prioritized other legislation “that, to be frank, none of the homeowners I’ve spoken to really cared about.”
For Blackmarr and others, that inaction confirmed what they feared: Their concerns weren’t being heard.
“Because of their inability to rally the Legislature to get something done about these unfair property taxes, we had to do something,” she says.
And they’re making waves. Just this month, the group’s original petition to abolish property taxes was approved by the state, the first step in getting it on the ballot in November.
“It’s quite amazing,” she adds. “They’re now starting to pay attention.”
The human cost: Fixed incomes, lost homes
Senior homeowners often feel the sting of rising property taxes more than anyone else. In counties across Ohio, longtime residents are being priced out of homes they’ve lived in for decades—not because of missed payments or risky loans, but because their tax bills now exceed what they once paid for their monthly mortgages.
Seniors “very often, they’ve owned their home for 30 years, 35 years or more. They’re likely on Social Security or on a fixed income of some sort,” Blackmarr explains. “Some of our property tax bills—if you divide them up into 12—are now more than people paid for their original mortgage. On a home they own outright.”
She’s one of them. The home she bought for $76,000 was recently reassessed at $299,000.
“I haven’t earned $299,000 on that home,” she explains. “So why am I paying tax on $299,000? It just doesn’t make good sense.”
Programs like Ohio’s Homestead Exemption are meant to offer relief, but they’ve failed to keep up with today’s housing values. The exemption deducts only $28,000 from a home’s taxable value and is limited to households earning under $40,000 a year.
“Twenty years ago, 25 years ago, that $28,000 was more meaningful,” says Blackmarr. “But now? With values what they are? It barely beats a sharp stick in the eye.”
The road to the ballot
Their campaign, which began as a senior-focused initiative called Save Our Seniors, has since grown into a full-scale grass-roots movement The effort is entirely citizen-led, unfunded by political action committees or outside groups. Members are paying for paper, signage, and outreach out of pocket. But what they lack in institutional backing, they say they make up for in urgency and numbers.
“It is wild,” says Blackmarr. “As we’re sitting here, emails are coming in because I’m signing people up to circulate, signing people up to coordinate, and it has just been nonstop. I get probably to the order of 250 to 300 inquiries a day.”
To get their constitutional amendment on the ballot, Citizens for Property Tax Reform must collect at least 413,000 valid signatures from registered Ohio voters by July 1, 2025—a monumental task that would overwhelm most grass-roots efforts. But organizers say they’ve tapped into a groundswell of public frustration that’s fueling their momentum.
“If you’d asked me a month ago, I’d have said it was going to be tight,” Blackmarr says. “But now? I really do believe we’ll hit that goal.”
If successful, the proposed amendment to abolish property taxes in the state will appear on the November 2025 ballot, giving voters the chance to fundamentally reshape how public services are funded in the state.
But Blackmarr stresses this isn’t an anti-tax or anti-public services movement.
“People like the city services. They like their public schools. And they don’t mind paying for it,” she says. “But this has gotten out of control.”
As she put it, “I’m happy to contribute—just don’t tie it to my house.”
