Matthews NC Property Taxes: What’s the Rate?

If you’re looking at houses around Charlotte from out of state, somebody has probably already told you the move is simple: get outside the city line and your property tax bill drops. It’s a reasonable thing to believe, and for a lot of the map it’s true. Matthews is the place where it barely does.

A house inside the Town of Matthews is taxed at a combined 77.22 cents per $100 of value for fiscal year 2026-2027, made up of a 49.27 cent Mecklenburg County rate and a 27.95 cent town rate, according to the Mecklenburg County Office of Tax Administration. The same house inside Charlotte is taxed at 78.57 cents. Crossing that line saves you one and a third cents.

Below is what that rate comes to in dollars on a Matthews house, how the town compares with Charlotte and the other five Mecklenburg towns, and what the revaluation landing on January 1, 2027 is likely to do to the number. I’m Steve Jarrell, I live in Weddington and I sell in these towns every week, and Matthews NC property taxes are the carrying cost that is easiest to get wrong from out of state, usually in the direction of optimism.

13 min read | By Steve Jarrell, The Longleaf Group at eXp Realty | Updated October 2026

What This Guide Covers

• What is the combined rate on a Matthews address?
• Does crossing the Charlotte line save you anything?
• So which Mecklenburg town is the cheap one?
• The half of your bill that isn’t the rate
• How to check the real number on an address
• Frequently asked questions

What is the combined rate on a Matthews address?

Two rates, one bill. If your house sits inside the Town of Matthews limits, you pay the Mecklenburg County rate of 49.27 cents per $100 of assessed value plus a Town of Matthews rate of 27.95 cents, which lands you at 77.22 cents. You do not pay a City of Charlotte rate on top of that. Matthews is its own incorporated town, not a Charlotte neighborhood, and the county’s own rate chart lists it alongside Cornelius, Davidson, Huntersville, Mint Hill and Pineville as one of the six towns that levy separately from the city.

Run your own number and it’s simple arithmetic. Take the assessed value, divide by 100, multiply by 0.7722. On the Matthews median sale price of $494,673, reported by Redfin for the three months ending August 2026, that’s about $3,820 a year. Add the county’s $61.50 solid waste fee and you’re at roughly $3,881. On a $700,000 house in the same town limits it’s about $5,405 before the fee.

A Matthews mailing address is not the same thing as a Matthews town address, and the gap between the two is expensive. Parcels that carry a Matthews postal address but sit outside the town limits in unincorporated Mecklenburg County pay the county’s 49.27 cents and no town rate at all, which on that same median value is about $2,437 a year. That’s a difference of roughly $1,383 annually between two houses that both say Matthews on the envelope. We walked through the same trap one town over in our look at what a Mint Hill mailing address does and doesn’t tell you, and the lesson holds here: the tax record is what the bill is built from.

Here’s where I’d push back on the usual relocation advice. People arrive convinced that getting out of the city limits is the move that saves them money, and in Mecklenburg County the town line is worth far less than the line between a town address and an unincorporated one. Move from a Charlotte address to a Matthews one and you save 1.35 cents per $100. Move from a Matthews town address to an unincorporated parcel with the same mailing address and you drop the town’s 27.95 cents entirely. If you’re budgeting around tax, that second boundary is the one to look at.

Does crossing the Charlotte line save you anything?

About $67 a year, on the median Matthews house. That is the whole prize. Charlotte’s combined rate for fiscal year 2026-2027 is 78.57 cents per $100 against the Town of Matthews at 77.22, a difference of 1.35 cents. On $494,673 of assessed value that comes to $66.78 a year, or roughly five and a half dollars a month. It is a rounding error on a mortgage payment, and it is nowhere near a reason to pick a town.

The more useful fact is what the number did last year. In the prior tax year the Town of Matthews combined rate was 77.22 cents and Charlotte’s was 76.68, which means a Matthews address was the more expensive of the two by about $27 a year on that same value. Charlotte then raised its city rate from 27.41 cents to 29.30 for this fiscal year, a 6.9% increase, and the ranking flipped. Both years are printed on the county’s own jurisdiction charts, the FY2026-2027 chart and the FY2025-2026 chart.

Matthews and Charlotte have been trading places on this line for two years, and which one is cheaper depends on which budget season you ask in. Neither town is the tax play. If a relocation blog or an AI answer tells you Matthews saves you a few hundred dollars a year against Charlotte, check the fiscal year it is quoting, and check the home value it is running on, because an older median will understate the bill on what the market is printing today.

So which Mecklenburg town is the cheap one?

Second from the top, which is not where most people would put it. Mecklenburg County has six incorporated towns outside Charlotte, and if you assume they are interchangeable on tax you are working with a spread of more than ten cents per $100 between the cheapest and the most expensive. Matthews sits near the expensive end of it, below Pineville and above everybody else.

Combined property tax rates in Mecklenburg County, fiscal year 2026-2027, in cents per $100 of assessed value, with the annual tax on the Matthews median sale price of $494,673. Source: Mecklenburg County Office of Tax Administration; sale price from Redfin, three months ending August 2026.

Jurisdiction	Combined rate	Tax on $494,673
Town of Pineville	79.27	$3,921
City of Charlotte	78.57	$3,887
Town of Matthews	77.22	$3,820
Town of Davidson	76.87	$3,803
Town of Huntersville	72.02	$3,563
Town of Mint Hill	71.77	$3,550
Town of Cornelius	68.58	$3,392
Unincorporated Mecklenburg	49.27	$2,437

The comparison that will actually change your shortlist is Matthews against Mint Hill. They are neighbors, they are both Mecklenburg towns, and the combined rates are 77.22 and 71.77. On the same $494,673 of value that is $3,820 against $3,550, a difference of $270 a year. Over a ten-year hold that is $2,700 at today’s rate and today’s value, and both of those reset before you get there, which is real money, and also smaller than it sounds when you hear one town is “cheaper.” If you are weighing those two, the tax line is not what should decide it.

Cornelius at 68.58 cents is the lowest of the six towns, and the bottom row matters most, because it shows how much of a Mecklenburg bill is county rather than municipal. Unincorporated county land pays 49.27 cents and nothing else, so on a Matthews address the town rate accounts for about 36% of the tax itself. The county’s share pays for county-wide services, which is why it is the same 49.27 whether you buy in Matthews, Mint Hill or inside the city.

The half of your bill that isn’t the rate

Everything above is only half the calculation. Your bill is the rate multiplied by the assessed value, and in Mecklenburg County the assessed value is about to move for everyone. The county is running a revaluation effective January 1, 2027, and that half of the bill is the part no rate chart can tell you.

North Carolina law requires a county to revalue at least every eight years. Mecklenburg has done it every four since 2019, and the Office of Tax Administration confirms the next one takes effect January 1, 2027, following the last one in 2023. The county reported that after an initial review of 428,506 parcels, the median increase for residential property is running at about 15%, with commercial around 30%. New values are scheduled to be announced and notices mailed in early 2027.

Run that through the arithmetic and the caveat shows up right behind it. A 15% increase applied to the Matthews median would take an assessed value of $494,673 to roughly $568,874. At today’s 77.22 cent rate that is about $4,393 a year, which is $573 more than the same house pays now.

But rates and values move together on purpose: the county says that after a revaluation, rates are adjusted to keep the process revenue-neutral unless elected officials choose otherwise, and the rate for that bill won’t be set by the county, the city and the town boards until the following spring. So nobody can hand you the 2027 number today, including me. What you can do is stop treating the current rate as a fixed cost of ownership, because the value half of the equation is scheduled to move and the median direction is up.

The review is still running, which gives you two things to do. Check your own property record card against the house while the window is open, because the value is built off what that record says the house is. And if you are buying between now and the spring, the tax figure on the listing and the figure in your lender’s escrow estimate are both built on the 2023 value, not the one you will actually be billed on.

If you take one thing from this, make it the order you check things in. Buyers price the rate because the rate is the number that’s easy to find, and then they inherit an assessed value they never looked at. The rate is public, it is set once a year by boards you can watch, and even Charlotte’s increase this year moved it less than two cents. The value is specific to your parcel, it is the bigger of the two levers, and in Mecklenburg it resets every four years whether you were paying attention or not.

Before you write an offer on a Matthews house I’d want to know the jurisdiction on the tax record, the current assessed value, and how far that value sits from what you’re about to pay for it, because that gap is your preview of the 2027 bill.

How to check the real number on an address

Pull the tax record, not the listing. Every figure in this guide is a jurisdiction-level rate, and what you owe depends on a parcel-level fact: whether that specific property sits inside the Town of Matthews limits. The county’s property lookup will tell you the jurisdiction, the current assessed value and the bill history on any parcel, and that takes about two minutes. The listing’s “annual taxes” line is a copy of an old bill, and on a Matthews address it can be off by more than $1,300.

Three things worth writing down while you’re in there. First, the jurisdiction line, because that is what decides whether the town’s 27.95 cents applies. Second, the current assessed value against the asking price, which tells you how much room there is between the two before the 2027 notice arrives. Third, the fee lines, because the rate is not the whole bill: the county’s solid waste fee runs $61.50 for single and multi-family property, Matthews adds a $25.00 vehicle fee, and the minimum bill in any Mecklenburg jurisdiction is $5.00.

Then put the number where it belongs, which is next to the rest of the carrying cost rather than on its own. Tax, insurance and dues are one line in your budget, and on a Matthews house the dues can be the bigger surprise of the three: we broke those down separately in what Matthews HOA fees cost and what the town already covers, and the wider picture is in our cost of living guide for Matthews. If you’re still choosing between towns rather than houses, start on the Matthews community page and the South Charlotte market data we update monthly.

Put January 5, 2027 in your phone. The current bill has to be paid by then to avoid interest, with interest starting January 6. If you close between now and then, the proration at the closing table is based on that bill, not on whatever the 2027 notice eventually says.

Frequently Asked Questions About Matthews NC Property Taxes

What is the property tax rate in Matthews NC?

If the tax record puts your house in the town rather than just the mailing address, you pay a combined 77.22 cents per $100 of assessed value for fiscal year 2026-2027. That is the Mecklenburg County rate of 49.27 cents plus a Town of Matthews rate of 27.95 cents, per the Mecklenburg County Office of Tax Administration jurisdiction tax rate chart.

Do Matthews NC residents pay City of Charlotte property tax?

No. Matthews is a separately incorporated town, so if you buy within the town line you are billed the county rate plus the Town of Matthews rate and no City of Charlotte rate. The county lists Matthews as one of six towns that levy separately from the city.

How much are property taxes on a typical Matthews NC home?

About $3,820 a year. The median Matthews sale price was $494,673 in the three months ending August 2026 according to Redfin, and at the combined 77.22 cent rate that comes to roughly $3,820, plus a $61.50 county solid waste fee.

Are Matthews NC property taxes cheaper than Charlotte’s?

Barely, and only this year. The combined rate inside Matthews is 77.22 cents against 78.57 inside Charlotte for fiscal year 2026-2027, a difference of about $67 a year on a $494,673 value. In the prior tax year Matthews was the higher of the two at 77.22 against Charlotte’s 76.68.

When are Mecklenburg County property taxes due?

You have to pay the current bill by January 5, 2027 to avoid interest, which begins accruing January 6, 2027. The minimum bill in any Mecklenburg jurisdiction is $5.00.

What will the 2027 revaluation do to my Matthews tax bill?

Mecklenburg revalues every four years and the next revaluation takes effect January 1, 2027, with your notice mailed in early 2027. After an initial review of 428,506 parcels the county reported a median residential increase of about 15%. Rates are then reset by the county, city and town boards in the spring, and the county says the adjustment is made to be revenue-neutral unless elected officials choose otherwise.

About the Author

I’m a licensed North Carolina and South Carolina broker and the team lead of The Longleaf Group at eXp Realty, which I co-lead with my wife Amanda. Before real estate, I joined VisualTour as President, led its rebrand to Paradym, and led the company to its acquisition by Constellation Software in 2020. I hold an MBA from the University of Tennessee with concentrations in Marketing and Innovation. The Longleaf Group is an eXp ICON Team and a RealTrends Verified Top Team by Volume for 2026, with 140+ five-star reviews.

I live in Weddington and I write up the carrying-cost side of these towns because it is where out-of-state buyers get the least help. If you want the jurisdiction, the assessed value and the current bill pulled on a specific Matthews address before you tour it, that is a five-minute job and I am happy to do it. Call or text 704-774-7170.