Longport's Low Tax Rate Isn't Luck. It's a Trade You Make When You Buy Here.

Scroll new construction listings in Longport this summer and one line shows up almost as often as elevator specs and ocean views: the seller pointing out, in capital letters, that the home comes with Longport's low taxes. It shows up next to asking prices well north of $2 million. That pairing runs against instinct. A barrier island where the average home value has climbed past $1.5 million, as of July 2026, should carry a tax bill to match. It doesn't.

Longport has held the lowest effective property tax rate in Atlantic County for years running, and the gap between Longport and its Downbeach neighbors isn't small. It's the widest spread in the county between what a home is worth and what its owner sends to the tax collector. The reason has nothing to do with luck, sand, or market cycles. It's a structural choice this borough made about how it educates its children, and that choice is still doing the work more than a decade later.

The Rate That Doesn't Show Up in the Listing Photos

New Jersey publishes two tax figures for every municipality each year: a general rate, used to calculate the bill, and an effective rate, which measures the tax burden against a home's true market value. The effective rate is the one that actually lets you compare towns, because it strips out differences in how aggressively each town has reassessed its properties.

Here's how the effective rate has moved across five Atlantic County shore towns over the last three published tax years, according to the New Jersey Division of Taxation's annual general tax rate reports:

Two things jump out. Every town on this list has seen its effective rate fall as property values rose faster than local budgets, a pattern playing out across the shore. But Longport hasn't just kept pace with that trend. It has stayed the floor of the county in every single year on record, and the gap to its nearest neighbor, Margate, has widened rather than closed. A buyer comparing a $2 million Longport listing to a $900,000 Ventnor listing on price per square foot alone is comparing the wrong number. The Ventnor buyer is paying more than double the tax rate on a fraction of the price.

Why the Cheapest Rate Sits Under the Most Expensive Homes

The mechanism traces back to a decision Longport made about its schools, not its beaches.

Longport runs two small schools of its own, Ross Elementary and Tighe Middle, which together enrolled 351 students as of the most recently published enrollment figures from the 2018-19 school year. What Longport does not run is a high school. For grades nine through twelve, it is what the state calls a non-operating district, meaning it pays tuition to send its teenagers elsewhere rather than building and staffing a secondary school for a borough of fewer than 900 year-round residents.

Until 2014, those students went to Atlantic City High School. During the hearings that led to the switch, district officials testified that Atlantic City tuition ran close to $24,000 per student, a cost spread across a class that has typically numbered somewhere between ten and twenty-five kids in a given year. Ocean City offered the same seat for roughly a quarter less. The state's Acting Education Commissioner approved the change, and since the 2014-15 school year, Longport's high schoolers have attended Ocean City High School under a sending-receiving agreement, a relationship confirmed in Ocean City's own school district records.

That arrangement matters for your tax bill because school costs make up the largest single share of most New Jersey property tax bills. A town that funds a full K-12 system, buildings, staff, athletics, transportation, carries that cost inside its own levy. Longport carries only the cost of two small buildings and a tuition check. Spread that smaller levy across a ratable base stacked with oceanfront and bayfront property values, and the rate that results is mathematically bound to land lower than a neighbor funding a full K-12 system across a ratable base built on far lower average home values.

The Bill Is Still the Highest in the County

None of this means Longport is cheap to own. It means Longport is a low rate applied to a very high value, and the two numbers tell different stories.

The state's most recent published average residential tax bill report, covering 2024, shows Longport's average bill at $13,501, the highest dollar figure of any town in this comparison. Margate's 2024 average sat at $9,917. Northfield's came in at $7,870. Among these towns, Longport residents are writing the biggest checks even while paying the smallest percentage of their home's value.

For a buyer, that distinction changes what question you should be asking an agent or a tax assessor before you make an offer:

• Don't ask which town has the lower tax bill. Ask which town has the lower effective rate against the price you're actually paying.
• Don't assume a lower list price in Margate or Ventnor means lower carrying costs. At a comparable purchase price, the rate difference can erase most of the sticker savings within a few years.
• Do factor in that Longport's rate has been falling for years, not just this one. This isn't a temporary dip that could snap back with the next reassessment cycle.

What You're Actually Trading For That Rate

The low rate isn't a marketing gimmick. It's the visible half of a choice Longport made about what kind of town it wants to be, and that choice shows up in more than the tax bill.

A borough with roughly 900 year-round residents and no in-borough high school isn't going to have a large school campus, a stadium, or the civic infrastructure that comes with educating several hundred teenagers locally. What it has instead are two small elementary buildings, quiet residential blocks, and a population weighted toward retirees and second-home owners rather than families cycling kids through a full K-12 pipeline. That's consistent with what Longport has been for more than a century: the quietest and most private of the four Downbeach communities, drawing the same families back generation after generation rather than turning over with new households needing new classrooms.

If you're the kind of buyer who wants a full-service, year-round school district down the street, that trade won't sit well. If you're buying a second home, planning a retirement move, or prioritizing a small, settled community over civic amenities you won't use, the trade works in your favor twice: once in the lifestyle, and again in the effective rate.

FAQ

Does Longport have its own high school? No. Longport operates only an elementary and middle school. High schoolers have attended Ocean City High School under a sending-receiving agreement since the 2014-15 school year, after previously attending Atlantic City High School.

Will Longport's tax rate stay this low? In the three most recent years of published state data, 2022, 2023, and 2025, the rate has fallen each time, and Longport has stayed the lowest of these five towns throughout that decline. Rates are set annually and can shift with reassessments or changes to the sending-district tuition agreement, so any buyer should confirm the current year's rate with the tax assessor before closing.

Is the effective rate the same everywhere in Longport? Yes, within the borough. The effective rate is a townwide figure. What varies property to property is the assessed value used to calculate your individual bill, which is why comparing your specific assessment to recent comparable sales matters as much as the townwide rate.

If you're weighing a purchase in Longport against a neighboring Downbeach town, the rate is only half the picture. The other half is knowing which numbers on a listing sheet are worth trusting and which ones need a second look. That's the kind of read Daniel Rallo gives clients before they write an offer, not after. Get your free home valuation and start the conversation with the numbers that actually apply to your situation.