The total property tax rate in Zebulon, NC for the 2026-27 tax year is $1.1141 per $100 of assessed value — Wake County's $0.5371, adopted with the FY2027 budget on June 1, 2026, plus the Town of Zebulon's $0.5770. Clayton, in supposedly cheaper Johnston County, is $1.0000. Zebulon is the more expensive of the two, and the Town of Zebulon's own rate is higher than Wake County's. County rates on this page come from each county's adopted FY2026-27 budget; municipal and fire district rates are the most recently published, from the NCDOR 2025-2026 Tax Rates and Effective Tax Rates file and each county's own 2025 rate schedule, retrieved July 25, 2026.
Buyers spend hours arguing about which county is cheaper. It is almost always the wrong argument. Across the Five County region the five county rates sit in a band from $0.5050 to $0.6300. The municipal rates run from $0.3550 to $0.8000 — more than twice the spread. The county line moves your bill a little. The town line moves it a lot.
Zebulon is the clearest example. Wake County charges $0.5371. The Town of Zebulon charges $0.5770 on top of it, which means the town takes more of your tax dollar than the county does. That is unusual: of the fifteen municipalities NCDOR lists in Wake County, Zebulon at $0.5770 is now the only one charging more than the county's own $0.5371 — Garner, the next highest at $0.5200, slipped below the county rate when Wake raised it two cents for 2026-27.
The trap: a "$0.51 county" and a "$0.54 county" sound interchangeable. But a home in Bailey (Nash County, $1.4300 combined) and a home in Raleigh ($0.8921 combined) are 60% apart on rate — same region, same MLS, same commute shed.
North Carolina property tax is levied by more than one body against the same assessed value, and the amounts are added together on a single bill from the county:
Important: NCDOR's published municipal and county rates exclude special and fire district rates — the agency says so in Note 1 of the same file. That is why we pulled the fire district numbers separately from each county's own 2025 rate schedule.
County rates are the ones adopted for FY2026-27: Wake's $0.5371 (adopted June 1, 2026), Johnston's $0.5100 (adopted June 15, 2026), Nash's $0.6300 and Wilson's $0.5950, both held flat. Franklin's $0.5050 is its last published rate; we have not been able to confirm whether the county changed it for FY2026-27, so treat the three Franklin rows as provisional and check with the county tax office. Municipal rates are from the NCDOR 2025-2026 Tax Rates and Effective Tax Rates file and fire district rates from the Wake County Tax Administration 2025 rate chart, the Johnston County Tax Administration, the Franklin County 2025 tax rate schedule and the Nash County 2025 tax rate schedule — all retrieved July 25, 2026. Towns adopt their budgets in June too, so confirm the municipal line with the town before you rely on it. Median sale prices are Doorify MLS closed-sale records for the trailing twelve months, as of July 25, 2026. Sorted by the bill on a fixed $400,000 assessment, cheapest first.
| Town | County | County + town (+ fire) | Combined | Median sale price | Tax at median | Tax on $400,000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Raleigh | Wake | 0.5371 + 0.3550 | 0.8921 | $450,000 | $4,014 | $3,568 |
| Apex | Wake | 0.5371 + 0.3560 | 0.8931 | $614,290 | $5,486 | $3,572 |
| Rolesville | Wake | 0.5371 + 0.4000 | 0.9371 | $435,000 | $4,076 | $3,748 |
| Wake Forest | Wake | 0.5371 + 0.4200 | 0.9571 | $497,000 | $4,757 | $3,828 |
| Smithfield | Johnston | 0.5100 + 0.4500 | 0.9600 | $329,900 | $3,167 | $3,840 |
| Knightdale | Wake | 0.5371 + 0.4400 | 0.9771 | $385,000 | $3,762 | $3,908 |
| Clayton | Johnston | 0.5100 + 0.4900 | 1.0000 | $370,000 | $3,700 | $4,000 |
| Louisburg | Franklin | 0.5050 + 0.5000 | 1.0050 | $335,000 | $3,367 | $4,020 |
| Garner | Wake | 0.5371 + 0.5200 | 1.0571 | $409,000 | $4,324 | $4,228 |
| Wendell | Wake | 0.5371 + 0.4200 + 0.1225 | 1.0796 | $398,250 | $4,300 | $4,318 |
| Selma | Johnston | 0.5100 + 0.6000 | 1.1100 | $329,706 | $3,660 | $4,440 |
| Zebulon | Wake | 0.5371 + 0.5770 | 1.1141 | $359,000 | $4,000 | $4,456 |
| Wilson | Wilson | 0.5950 + 0.5250 | 1.1200 | $257,690 | $2,886 | $4,480 |
| Benson | Johnston | 0.5100 + 0.6100 | 1.1200 | $350,000 | $3,920 | $4,480 |
| Youngsville | Franklin | 0.5050 + 0.5400 + 0.0997 | 1.1447 | $420,000 | $4,808 | $4,579 |
| Middlesex | Nash | 0.6300 + 0.5200 | 1.1500 | $315,000 | $3,623 | $4,600 |
| Nashville | Nash | 0.6300 + 0.5900 | 1.2200 | $298,997 | $3,648 | $4,880 |
| Franklinton | Franklin | 0.5050 + 0.7100 + 0.0650 | 1.2800 | $375,295 | $4,804 | $5,120 |
| Spring Hope | Nash | 0.6300 + 0.6700 | 1.3000 | $317,990 | $4,134 | $5,200 |
| Bailey | Nash | 0.6300 + 0.8000 | 1.4300 | $328,490 | $4,697 | $5,720 |
All rates are dollars per $100 of assessed value. The "tax at median" column applies each town's combined rate to that town's own median closed sale price — useful for budgeting, but read the caveat in the revaluation section below, because assessed value and sale price are not the same number and the gap differs by county.
Sorting by rate and sorting by money produce two different lists, and only one of them is the list you actually write a check against.
On a normalized $400,000 home, Raleigh is cheapest at about $3,568 and Bailey is dearest at about $5,720 — a $2,152 annual spread inside a region you can drive across in an hour. But nobody buys a normalized home. On each town's live median sale price, the ranking inverts at both ends: Wilson carries a $1.1200 rate, above Zebulon's, and still has the lowest actual bill of all twenty at roughly $2,886, because its median sale price of $257,690 as of July 2026 is the lowest in the region. Apex has the second-lowest rate on the list and the highest bill, about $5,486, on a $614,290 median.
Zebulon is the sharpest version of the same effect. It carries the highest combined rate of any Wake County municipality and still lands second-cheapest of the eight Wake towns here once the rate meets real prices — $4,000 a year, just under Raleigh's $4,014 and well under Wake Forest's $4,757 and Apex's $5,486. That is the eastern Wake argument in one line: a premium rate on a discounted price, and the discount is bigger than the premium.
Add Wendell's municipal rate to the county rate and you get $0.9571. That number is incomplete. Footnote 3 on the Wake County Tax Administration's own 2025 rate chart reads that all property within Wendell is also subject to the current fire district tax — the countywide Fire Tax District rate, which Wake County raised from $0.1075 to $0.1225 for 2025.
So Wendell's real combined rate is $1.0796, not $0.9571. On a $400,000 home that is $4,318 instead of $3,828 — a $490 a year difference that every portal we have checked gets wrong, because they copy the NCDOR municipal table without the footnote. Zebulon carries no such add-on; the Town of Zebulon funds its own fire service inside the $0.5770.
The same correction applies in Franklin County, where the county's 2025 schedule shows Franklinton at $1.2800 combined once its $0.0650 fire district is added, and Youngsville at $1.1447 with its $0.0997 district. Louisburg has no add-on — its $1.0050 is the whole rate.
A tax rate is a fraction, and the denominator moves. Every county reappraises real property on its own schedule — North Carolina requires it at least once every eight years — and a county that revalued last year is charging its rate against 2025 market values, while a county that revalued three years ago is charging against stale ones. Comparing raw rates across different revaluation vintages is meaningless.
NCDOR solves this with an effective tax rate: the published rate adjusted by the county's sales assessment ratio, which measures how close assessed values still sit to what property is actually selling for. Here is the picture for our five counties. The rate column is the county's adopted 2026-27 rate; the sales assessment ratio and effective rate are NCDOR's published 2025-26 figures, which are computed against the prior year's rate:
| County | 2026-27 county rate | 2025 sales assessment ratio (NCDOR) | NCDOR effective county rate, 2025-26 | Latest revaluation | Next scheduled | Unincorporated: county + fire |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wake | 0.5371 | 0.9539 | 0.4933 | 2024 | 2027 | 0.6596 (fire 0.1225) |
| Johnston | 0.5100 | 0.9878 | 0.5137 | 2025 | 2029 | 0.6250 (fire 0.1150) |
| Franklin | 0.5050 | 0.9462 | 0.4778 | 2024 | 2030 | 0.5650–0.6250 (fire 0.0600–0.1200) |
| Nash | 0.6300 | 0.8902 | 0.5608 | 2024 | 2032 | 0.7000–0.7800 (fire 0.0700–0.1500) |
| Wilson | 0.5950 | 0.9293 | 0.5530 | 2024 | 2029 | county 0.5950 + district varies |
Read the ratio column carefully. Nash County's 0.8902 is the lowest of the five — its assessed values have drifted about 11% below current market prices, which is why its headline $0.6300 behaves more like $0.5608. Johnston's 0.9878 says the opposite: it revalued for 2025, its assessments are close to market, and its rate is doing its full work. Johnston's county rate dropped from $0.6700 to $0.5200 in that revaluation, which is where the "Johnston is cheap now" story comes from. The rate fell because the values rose.
Two dates matter more than the rest. Wake County's next revaluation is effective January 1, 2027, and after that the county moves to a two-year cycle beginning January 1, 2029 — confirmed by Wake County Tax Administration and by NCDOR's own next-scheduled column. If you buy in Wake this year, your assessment is on a 2024 basis and will be restated on January 1, 2027 — about five months from now. Nash County, by contrast, is not scheduled again until 2032.
A revaluation is not a tax increase by itself. Boards typically adopt a lower rate against higher values. But it is a redistribution — if your neighborhood appreciated faster than the county average, your share goes up even at a revenue-neutral rate. Eastern Wake has appreciated faster than the county average for a decade.
Here is the piece almost nobody writes about. A home in unincorporated Wake County pays $0.5371 to the county and $0.1225 to the Fire Tax District. Nothing else. Combined: $0.6596.
| Same $400,000 home | Combined rate | Annual tax | Per month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Inside Zebulon town limits | 1.1141 | $4,456 | $371 |
| Unincorporated Wake County | 0.6596 | $2,638 | $220 |
| Difference | 0.4545 | $1,818 | $152 |
Same county. Same Wake County Public School System assignment rules. Same sheriff, same EMS, same county services, same 27597 mailing address. What you give up is town police patrol, town parks and recreation, town trash pickup and town water and sewer — which usually means a well and a septic system, and that is a real trade, not a free lunch. On a thirty-year loan, though, $152 a month of tax savings is worth roughly $23,000 to $25,000 of additional borrowing power at a 6% to 7% mortgage rate. That is not a rounding error.
The catch is that you cannot tell from a listing. As of July 25, 2026 there are 276 active listings in Zebulon in the Doorify MLS mirror, 158 of them new construction — and the MLS carries a postal city, not a jurisdiction. A 27597 address can be inside the Town of Zebulon, in unincorporated Wake, or across the line in Johnston, Nash or Franklin County entirely. The only way to know is to pull the parcel record and read the tax district codes on it. We do that for clients before they write an offer, because on a $400,000 house it is worth about the same as a quarter-point on the mortgage rate.
Property tax is the line item buyers underestimate most, because it is the one the lender quotes last. At Zebulon's $1.1141 a $359,000 purchase carries roughly $333 a month in county and town tax before insurance, before HOA, before PMI. In Raleigh at $0.8921, a $400,000 purchase carries $297. In Bailey at $1.4300, it is $477.
Run your own with the mortgage calculator on our buyer page — it has a property-tax field, and now you have the right rate to put in it. Then start from what the tax bill lets you afford rather than the other way round: browse active listings, or narrow to Zebulon, Clayton or the rest of the region town by town. If you are selling and want the other side of the ledger, our breakdown of what it really costs to sell a home in North Carolina covers the excise tax and everything else that comes out at closing.
Considering a specific address? Send it to us and we will pull the parcel's actual tax district codes, the current assessed value and the exact annual bill — inside town limits or out — before you write the offer. If you want the unincorporated-Wake option specifically, ask and we will set up a saved search that only surfaces those parcels.
Rates are for the 2026-27 tax year. County rates are from each county's adopted FY2026-27 budget — Wake's $0.5371 adopted June 1, 2026 and Johnston's $0.5100 adopted June 15, 2026, with Nash and Wilson held flat and Franklin's $0.5050 unconfirmed for FY2026-27. Municipal and fire district rates are the most recently published, retrieved July 25, 2026 from the NCDOR 2025-2026 County and Municipal Tax Rates and Effective Tax Rates file and from each county's own 2025 rate schedule; towns adopt in June, so confirm the municipal line with the town. Market figures are Doorify MLS closed-sale and active-listing records as of July 25, 2026. Tax figures are illustrative estimates applied to a stated assessment, not a prediction of any specific bill; assessed value is set by the county and is not the same as sale price. Confirm any figure with the county tax office, and speak to a licensed tax professional about your own situation.
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