State Home and Land Ownership Report

by Joe Littlejohn

It has been speculated that a higher rate of homeownership, indicates a higher rate of citizenry well disposed to property rights issues, since they would have a vested interest in protecting their own property. For example, a higher rate of people within cities rent, which correlates with things like rent control laws, subsidized housing, etc.

However, if you look at the U.S. Census figures, the percentage of homeownership is fairly even across the nation. All of the FSP candidate states are above the national average except for Alaska which trailed by only 2.5%. The highest were Maine and Delaware being more than 7% over the U.S. average.

This doesn't appear to be a very critical factor since most of our states under consideration are above average anyway, and the spread isn't very significant (less than 10% from top to bottom).

So I looked for other factors, such as number of small businesses, the self employed, property taxes, farm land, the percentage of government owned land per state, and rent control and zoning laws.

This short paper was primarily meant to present raw data relating to personal property issues, rather than an full analysis. The following are a few statistically significant facts which seemed to stand out:

• largest amount and percentage of gov. land - Alaska
• smallest amount of farm land and farms - Alaska
• smallest percentage of home owners - Alaska
• smallest number employed by small business - Alaska
• least land zoning, according to Sierra Club - Alaska
• Smallest actual amount of government land - Delaware
• only state with no USFW, NPS, BLM land - Delaware
• largest per capita rate of property tax - Delaware
• smallest percent employed by small business - Delaware
• smallest number and percent of self employed - Delaware
• largest percentage of home owners - Maine,Delaware
• Smallest percentage of government land - Maine
• largest actual amount of property tax collected Maine
• largest amount of farm land - South Dakota
• smallest total property tax collected - South Dakota
• smallest per capita property tax rate - South Dakota
• largest total small business income - Idaho
• largest number of employer businesses - Idaho
• largest number employed by small business - Montana
• largest number self employed - Montana
• most land zoning, according to Sierra Club - Montana
• largest percent state revenue from property tax New Hampshire
• largest workforce - New Hampshire
• smallest amount of small business income - North Dakota
• smallest workforce - Wyoming

U.S. Census figures, Homeownership Rates by State: 1997 to 2001

	1997	1998	1999	2000	2001
United States	65.7	66.3	66.8	67.4	67.8
Alaska	67.2	66.3	66.4	66.4	65.3
Delaware	69.2	71.0	71.6	72.0	75.4
Idaho	72.3	72.6	70.3	70.5	71.7
Maine	74.9	74.6	77.4	76.5	75.5
Montana	67.5	68.6	70.6	70.2	68.3
New Hampshire	66.8	69.6	70.2	69.2	68.4
North Dakota	68.1	68.0	70.1	70.7	71.0
South Dakota	67.6	67.3	70.7	71.2	71.5
Vermont	69.1	69.1	69.1	68.7	69.8
Wyoming	67.6	70.0	69.8	71.0	73.5

States Ranked by Total Property Taxes and Per Capita, 2001 (revised July 2002)

Total Property Tax Revenue by State (in millions of dollars)

• 40 Maine 2,669 m
• 41 Idaho 2.558 m
• 43 Delaware 2,174 m
• 44 New Hampshire 1,776 m
• 45 Vermont 1,553 m
• 46 Montana 1,496 m
• 47 Alaska 1,429 m
• 48 North Dakota 1,231 m
• 49 Wyoming 1,124 m
• 50 South Dakota 977 m

Note: Higher population states of necessity have higher total property tax revenue, so these figures do not mean much.

Property Tax Per Capita (in dollars)

• 3 Delaware 2,731.14
• 7 Vermont 2,532.64
• 9 Wyoming 2,273.96
• 11 Alaska 2,250.30
• 17 Maine 2,074.30
• 19 North Dakota 1,940.35
• 20 Idaho 1,936.48
• 40 Montana 1,653.86
• 47 New Hampshire 1,410.29
• 50 South Dakota 1,291.92

Caveat: states with higher per capita income will have higher per capita taxes even if taxes as a percentage rate are lower.

Property Taxes, Percentage of State Total Taxes:

• New Hampshire 25.8
• Vermont 23.7
• Montana 13.7
• Wyoming 9.8
• Alaska 3.2
• Maine 1.8
• North Dakota 0.2
• South Dakota ***
• Delaware ***
• Idaho ***
• U.S. average 1.9

( *** local taxes, fees, not collected at state level )

Caveat: states with higher figures in this table have lower sales and income taxes than states with lower figures in this table.

Farm Land (ranked by percentage of farm land)

state	number of farms	total square miles of land	total acres	percent of total state land
SD	32,500	75,896	48,573K	90.6
ND	31,500	68,994	44,156K	89.9
MT	27,000	145,556	93,155K	62.0
WY	9,200	97,105	62,147K	55.7
DE	2,800	1,955	1,251K	46.8
ID	24,500	82,751	52,960K	22.7
VT	6,600	9,249	5,919K	22.5
NH	3,000	8,969	5,740K	7.3
ME	7,000	30,865	19,753K	6.5
AK	560	570,374	365,039K	0.2

SOURCE: Calculations by Northeast-Midwest Institute staff based on data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistics Service, "Farms and Land in Farms Final Estimates, 1993-97," (Statistical Bulletin 955, January 1999), and U.S. Bureau of the Census for state land area. (Note: not all farm land is necessarily owned by the farmer- some is leased from other land owners, or the BLM for example )

Land Owned by State and Federal Government, by percentage of total

state	US ranking	Federal %	State %	Both %	Gov't Acreage
AK	1	67	28	95.8	349,827 K
ID	4	65.2	5.2	70.4	37,268 K
WY	7	49.7	6.2	55.9	34,767 K
MT	12	31.9	5.6	37.5	34.910 K
NH	19	15.1	2.9	18	1,030 K
VT	25	14.2	1.6	15.8	933 K
ND	34	7.3	1.8	9.1	4,038 K
SD	35	8.7	0.2	8.9	4,296 K
DE	37	2.5	4.9	7.4	92 K
ME	41	1.2	4.5	5.7	1,128 K

Small Business and Self-Employed, 2001-2002 (Small Business Administration data)

state	total small businesses	total small business income	persons employed by small business	self-employed persons	total work force
AK	16,400	$ 1.8 B	123,200 (62%)	27,400 (13%)	198,400
DE	25,200	$1.4 B	166,000 (46%)	19,400 (5%)	360,700
NH	39,500	$3.6 B	293,800 (56%)	50,700 (10%)	528,900
VT	21,200	$1.5 B	158,900 (65%)	31,900 (13%)	246,300
ME	38,900	$2.7 B	288,800 (61%)	70,400 (15%)	475,100
WY	19,100	$1.4 B	114,800 (68%)	29,900 (18%)	169,200
MT	32,600	$2.0 B	203,400 (71%)	59,000 (20%)	288,300
ID	40,000	$3.8 B	254,100(59%)	70,000 (16%)	434,400
ND	18,500	$1.3 B	163,500 (65%)	40,400 (16%)	250,300
SD	22,800	$2.4 B	180,600 (62%)	52,600 (18%)	295,100

"Small businesses" are defined here as those with fewer than 500 employees; employment figures count only non-farm jobs.

States lacking but not preempting rent control laws: Alaska, Delaware, Maine, Montana

States that explicitly preempt rent control: Idaho, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, Wyoming (thus, none of the states under consideration actually have rent control)

Land Zoning Laws of Various States as ranked by the Sierra Club; "Open Space Protection"

rank	state	OSP	APD	APZ	ACE	TDR	PPF	FPS	FEI
7	MT	3	3	2	2	2	1	1	3
15	ME	2	3	3	1	3	2	2	2
16	VT	1	3	3	1	2	3	3	2
20	DE	3	1	3	1	3	3	2	3
23	WY	3	3	2	3	3	1	2	2
31	ID	3	3	2	3	2	2	2	3
39	ND	X	1	2	3	3	1	3	3
43	NH	3	3	3	1	3	3	3	3
45	SD	X	3	2	3	3	1	3	3
49	AK	3	3	3	3	3	X	3	3

• OSP state open space protection
• APD agricultural protection districts
• APZ agricultural protection zoning
• ACE purchase of agricultural conservation easements
• TDR transfer of development rights
• PPF percentage of prime farmland destroyed 82-92
• FPS flood plain sprawl
• FEI field expert input

Rating: 1 = effective, 2 = moderately effective, 3 = not effective, X = missing info
Note: the Sierra Club can be generally considered hostile to both property rights and private enterprise, thus their "effective" rating (1) should probably be construed as a negative in regards to individual rights. In this case, read the state rankings as, "the higher the number (the lower on the list), the better."

September 24, 2002

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of the Free State Project, its Officers, or Directors.