Every few months, a Paramus homeowner opens a fresh assessment notice, sees a lower percentage printed at the top, and still ends up paying more than last year. It isn't a mistake. It's the mechanics of a tax system built on two moving parts that don't move together: an official rate that has been sliding for a decade, and a home value that has been climbing faster than the rate can fall.
Anyone comparing Paramus to another Bergen County town has run into the headline number: Paramus taxes are low, thanks to the malls. That part is true. But the rate you see quoted in a listing or a market blog is only half the math a buyer needs. The other half is what's happening to home values while that rate ticks down, and what's about to happen on 13 acres of mall parking lot that has quietly underwritten the whole arrangement for almost seventy years.
The Rate Really Did Just Fall Again
Paramus Mayor Christopher DiPiazza confirmed in March 2026 that last year's tax rate was the lowest the borough had seen in a decade, at 1.499 percent. This year's estimate comes in even lower, at 1.415 percent, as the borough's rolling reassessment continues to true up commercial properties to their actual market value. DiPiazza has said the reassessment is expected to shift more of the tax burden onto commercial parcels, and that half of Paramus homes are projected to see an estimated decrease even after the new assessments take effect.
That's a real, documented trend, not marketing language recycled from one blog to the next. It's also exactly why the rate story alone can mislead a buyer who stops reading after the percentage sign.
The Ratable Math Behind the Discount
Paramus carries more than $13 billion in total assessed property value, and roughly 42 percent of that comes from commercial properties, according to the borough's own figures. That's an unusually heavy commercial share for a town of its size, and it's the reason the residential rate can sit well below what neighboring towns charge. Commercial parcels, especially ones the size of Westfield Garden State Plaza, generate enormous tax revenue on their own. Garden State Plaza alone is estimated to account for roughly a tenth of all property taxes collected across the entire borough. Add three more major mall properties, a dealership row along Route 17, and a dense cluster of corporate offices, and you get a municipality that funds a large share of its schools and services before a single homeowner's check gets cashed.
The residential rate in Paramus isn't low because the town spends less. It's low because someone else is paying more of the bill, and that someone is currently the mall parking lot.
That's worth sitting with before you compare towns on rate alone. A town's effective rate tells you how the tax burden is split between commercial and residential owners inside that town. It tells you almost nothing about what your actual bill will be once it's multiplied against your home's assessed value.
Here's what that split looks like against a specific Bergen County comparison, using 2025 county-level tax data:
| Town | Effective Tax Rate (2025) | Average Residential Bill |
|---|---|---|
| Paramus | 1.434% | $12,095 |
| Teaneck | 2.219% | $13,718 |
The rate gap between these two towns is nearly a full percentage point. The gap in what an actual homeowner pays each year is about $1,600. Paramus's commercial base closes most of the distance, but not all of it, because the home values behind those bills aren't identical either.
Why the Bill Still Climbs
This is the part the rate alone doesn't show you. Over the three months ending in May 2026, the median sale price for a Paramus home came in at $1.2 million, up 7.5 percent from the same period the year before. Homes were also taking longer to sell, an average of 79 days compared to 60 days the prior year, even as sale prices still landed at roughly 101 percent of the final list price. Separately, average home values in the 07652 ZIP code were up 8.5 percent year over year as of mid-2026.
Zoom out further and the pattern holds. Multiple listing service data covering 2016 through 2025 shows the median sold price in Paramus climbing from $605,000 to $1.08 million, a gain of about 78.5 percent over the decade, or roughly 6.6 percent compounded annually. A falling rate applied to a rising number still produces a rising bill. If your home's assessed value climbs 7 or 8 percent in a year and the rate drops from 1.499 to 1.415 percent, you haven't broken even. You're paying more, just at a slightly gentler rate than you would have otherwise.
None of this makes Paramus a bad buy. It makes the rate a partial answer to a question buyers usually ask in full: what will I actually owe? The honest response requires looking at both lines on the notice, the rate and the assessed value, not just the one that happens to be shrinking.
Five Hundred Seventy-Five New Neighbors, Same Parcel
The commercial base that has carried Paramus's residential rate for decades is now getting a new kind of tenant, and it's the first real test of whether that arrangement holds as the mall itself changes shape.
On April 29, 2026, Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield and Mill Creek Residential broke ground on Modera Garden State Plaza, the first phase of a long-planned redevelopment of the mall's own parking lots into a mixed-use town center. The initial phase covers about 13 acres and will bring two five-story buildings containing 575 market-rate studio, one-, and two-bedroom apartments, along with roughly 48,000 to 50,000 square feet of ground-floor retail. A one-acre public park called Sprout Green anchors the plan, connected by new internal streets: Sprout Crescent looping around the green, Marquee Lane named for the drive-in movie theater that once stood on the site, and Bambergers Lane honoring the department store that anchored the mall when it opened in 1957. A pedestrian corridor called Plaza Passage will link the new residences directly to the existing mall. First move-ins are expected in mid-2028, and future phases under discussion include a hotel, medical offices, and senior housing.
This is where the tax story gets genuinely interesting rather than just informative. The commercial ratable base that has kept Paramus's residential rate among the lowest in the county has, until now, been almost entirely retail. Adding 575 residential units onto that same parcel introduces a use the borough hasn't had to account for at this scale before. There's no public accounting yet of exactly how those units will be classified against the ratable rolls that have made Paramus's rate story what it is. It's not a reason for alarm. It's a reason to watch the next few years of assessment data more closely than a buyer normally would, because the mechanism that made the current comparison table work is being altered in real time on the exact property that anchors it.
What This Means If You're Comparing Towns Right Now
If you're weighing Paramus against another Bergen County town, run the comparison two ways rather than one. First, compare the effective rate, which tells you how each town splits its tax burden between commercial and residential owners. Second, apply that rate to the actual price of the home you're considering, not the town median, because Paramus's median has been moving up nearly 7 to 8 percent a year and a rate quoted from last year's notice may already be stale by the time you close.
Ask your agent or the seller for the most recent 12 months of tax bills alongside the assessment history, not just the current year's number. If a revaluation has happened recently, as Paramus has done on a rolling basis, the bill on record may not reflect where the assessment is headed next. And if you're weighing a longer horizon, keep an eye on how the borough treats the Modera Garden State Plaza units once they hit the tax rolls. A shift in the composition of that ratable base is exactly the kind of structural change that moves a town's rate five or ten years out, long after the headline comparison you're reading today has gone stale.
Quick Answers for Comparison Shoppers
Will my Paramus tax bill go down this year? The rate itself is projected to fall to about 1.415 percent for 2026, and the mayor's office has said roughly half of homes are expected to see a decrease even after updated assessments. Whether your specific bill drops depends on how your home's new assessed value compares to your neighbors', not just the borough-wide rate.
Does the Garden State Plaza redevelopment affect my taxes right now? Not yet. Modera Garden State Plaza only broke ground in April 2026 and won't see its first residents until mid-2028. Its effect on the borough's ratable mix, and by extension the residential rate, is a multi-year question rather than something reflected in this year's bill.
How should I compare Paramus's rate to another town without getting misled? Look at the average residential bill, not just the percentage rate, since a low rate on a high-priced home can land close to a higher rate on a lower-priced one. Then check how recently each town completed a reassessment, since a rate that hasn't caught up to current values understates what you'll actually owe once it does.
Property tax mechanics rarely make it into a home tour, but they shape a monthly payment as much as the mortgage rate does. If you're weighing Paramus against another Bergen County town and want the full math run against a specific address rather than a borough-wide average, The Doyle Group can walk through the actual numbers with you before you write an offer.
