Do you pay property tax in Oregon?

Yes, you pay property taxes in Oregon. Although, due to measure 50, you pay on the assessed value of the home, not necessarily the RMV.

Measure 50 was passed in May 1997, to balance out tax increases due to rising property values. This measure made it so that they could only increase the assessed value 3 % above the previous year's assessed value. On the 1997-98 property taxes they made the assessed value rollback to the 1995-96 assessed values minus 10%. Oregon can increase the property tax only by 3% each year. Exceptions to this include remodels costing more than 10%, new construction, etc.

So in my case, we live in an older home that hasn't had more than $10,000 in remodeling done. Our RMV was 186,443 last year and 159,356 the previous year. Our taxes will not go down. Why, because our AV was only 84,317 and is no where near our RMV yet. This happened because of the housing boom over the last few years. The AV value really benefited us in the past years when our RMV was rising over $50,000 a year. Now, if for some reason next year the RMV went down to $80,000 then yes our taxes would go down. Our AV would reset to $80,000.

I'd rather be paying an increase of 3% than a 50% increase. We probably would have lost our home.

Keep in mind though that you can have more than a 3% increase if you live in an urban renewal district like we do or you pass local bond levies.