Arlington spent eight years cutting its property tax rate. In 2025 it stopped, and then raised almost everything else at the same time.
If you own here, the last twelve months moved several lines on your housing budget at once, and most of them are published figures you can check. Here is what an Arlington house actually costs to hold, and the one thing about this city that changes your bill more than anything you can control.
What an Arlington house costs to buy right now
The median home price in Arlington was $340,000 as of July 2026, down about 1.59% year over year.
A price that drifts down while carrying costs drift up is a specific kind of squeeze. It does not feel like a crash, and it will not show up in a headline, but it quietly changes the arithmetic for anyone holding a property they were planning to sell later rather than sooner.
Your school district depends on your address, and it is the biggest line
This is the Arlington fact most owners get wrong, and it is worth more than any other paragraph on this page.
Arlington Independent School District covers the majority of the City of Arlington. It does not cover all of it. The district's boundaries also extend into much of the Tarrant County portion of Grand Prairie and reach into parts of Mansfield and Fort Worth. Which means the largest single line on your tax bill, the school district, is decided by where your parcel sits rather than by the city you live in.
Two houses on opposite sides of the same street can carry different school rates. If you are buying, do not assume the district from the postal address. If you already own, look at the entity list on your actual tax statement rather than at a general guide to Arlington, because the general guide may be describing a district you are not in.
For scale, Arlington ISD's own published rate for 2024-25 was $1.1035 per $100 of value, split $0.8128 in maintenance and operations and $0.2907 in debt service. That is roughly two-thirds of a typical Tarrant County bill by itself.
The city rate went up after eight years of cuts
The City of Arlington lowered its property tax rate every year from 2017 through 2024. For fiscal year 2026 the council adopted a rate of 62.98 cents per $100 of valuation, an increase, which the city estimated would add roughly $5 a month to an average home's bill.
Five dollars is not the story. The direction is. A rate that has only moved one way for eight years is a rate homeowners stop watching, and this is the year it turned.
The effective rate, which is what you actually pay
Nominal rates apply to taxable value rather than market value, so the honest figure is the effective one. Ownwell's Tarrant County data puts Arlington at about 1.49% of home value, on a median home value of $295,138 and a median annual bill of $4,349.
That 1.49% sits essentially at the Texas median and well above the national median near 1.02%. Arlington is not an outlier within Texas. It is simply a full-freight Texas tax bill on a mid-priced house, which comes to about $362 a month at the median and more like $422 on a house at today's median sale price.
What the 2026 homestead exemption changed
Texas voters approved Proposition 13 in November 2025, raising the general residence homestead exemption from $100,000 to $140,000 effective January 1, 2026. Appraisal districts apply it to qualifying homestead accounts from the 2026 tax year forward.
That exemption comes off the school district portion, which as established above is the largest slice of an Arlington bill. Confirm it is actually on your account with the Tarrant Appraisal District rather than assuming it carried over from a previous owner. And if you protest, remember the deadline is May 15 or 30 days from the date the district mails your notice, whichever is later, with the clock running from the mailing rather than the delivery.
Water, sewer, stormwater and trash all moved on the same day
Rate changes took effect on October 1, 2025 across four separate city services, which is why several Arlington households noticed their bill jump without being able to point at one cause.
Water and sewer rose 7.94% for average residential users, which the city put at about $5.89 a month, and 6.54% for minimum users, about $2.18. The stormwater fee went from $9.50 to $10.00 per equivalent residential unit. Residential refuse collection went from $21.80 to $22.71 a month. The city attributed the water and sewer increase to $13.9 million in additional costs across raw water purchases, wastewater treatment, debt service and electricity.
Individually these are small. Together with the property tax increase, the city's own estimate for a typical household was roughly $12 a month in combined impact, and that is before your appraisal moves.
Insurance and power
The Zebra puts the average Arlington homeowners policy at about $3,774 a year citywide, with the same data showing roughly $3,075 at $250,000 of dwelling coverage and $4,516 at $400,000. Coverage level is doing most of the work in that spread, which is why a city average is a starting point rather than a quote.
On electricity, EnergySage reported an average residential rate near 16 cents per kilowatt-hour in Arlington as of August 2026, with an average monthly bill around $244 on roughly 1,551 kWh. Treat that as an upper-middle estimate, since the sample comes from households shopping for quotes rather than a random one.
What a $340,000 Arlington house actually costs each month
Take the median price of $340,000, put 20% down, and finance the rest over 30 years at 6.71%, which is where Freddie Mac put the average 30-year fixed rate for the week ending 3 September 2026. Principal and interest come to about $1,757 a month. Property tax at the 1.49% effective rate adds roughly $422 before homestead relief, and insurance at the citywide average adds about $315. That is a PITI payment near $2,494 a month.
On top of that sit the things you cannot opt out of: electricity near $244, stormwater at $10.00, refuse at $22.71, and water and sewer volume charges on your usage. Call it comfortably over $2,750 a month all in, on a house priced near the middle of the market. And note which lines moved this year. Principal and interest were fixed the day you signed. The tax rate and four separate city charges were raised by council decision.
When the numbers stop working
Rising carrying costs on a softening price is the combination that turns a comfortable hold into an expensive one. The people who call us about Arlington houses are usually not in crisis. They are running two housing costs after a move, holding an inherited property that still bills every month, or watching a rental stop covering its own taxes.
Worth saying plainly: unpaid property taxes in Texas carry their own foreclosure path, separate from your mortgage, and it moves faster than most owners expect. If you are behind rather than merely stretched, that is a different conversation and a more urgent one. This page explains the options: stop foreclosure texas.
If you have equity and time, list it, and we will tell you so. A cash sale earns its discount by being fast and certain, and if you do not need speed or certainty you are paying for something you are not using. Where it does fit is the narrow case: a repair list you will not fund, a deadline you cannot move, or a property you simply need to stop paying for. Start here for the Arlington side: sell my house fast arlington tx. The same exercise run for a very different Metroplex market is in this breakdown of what a Plano house really costs to own.
Three things to check before you decide
Look at the entity list on your own tax statement and confirm which school district you are actually in, because in Arlington that is not a safe assumption. Confirm the homestead exemption is on your account with the Tarrant Appraisal District, and note your protest deadline the day the notice is mailed. And pull your last twelve utility bills rather than an average, so you can see what the October 2025 changes did across all four services at once.
All three are free and all three take an afternoon. Two of them are worth more than any renovation decision you will make this year.
Figures cited here come from published sources: median home price as reported for July 2026; Ownwell's Tarrant County property tax data; the City of Arlington's adopted fiscal year 2026 tax rate as reported at adoption; Arlington ISD's published 2024-25 tax rate; Arlington ISD boundary description; the City of Arlington's announced rate changes effective October 1, 2025; The Zebra's Arlington homeowners insurance averages; EnergySage's Arlington electricity figures as of August 2026; and protest deadlines published by the Texas Comptroller. Rates, fees and premiums change and vary by parcel, by district and by policy. This is general information, not tax, insurance or legal advice.
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