On the morning of February 27, 2025, roughly seventy people gathered outside the Columbia County government offices on Perimeter Parkway and stayed there most of the day. Inside, commissioners were about to vote on whether to opt the county out of a new statewide property tax program. By that evening, the vote was unanimous. Columbia County said no to House Bill 581, the floating homestead exemption Georgia voters had approved a few months earlier. County Commission Chairman Doug Duncan told a local news crew the plan wasn't to leave homeowners with nothing in its place. "We have opted out, but our focus is to come up with our own homestead floating exemption to have in place for this tax year," he said.
That meeting happened a year and a half ago, but its effects are still landing on Evans buyers today, and most of them have no idea it happened at all.
If you're comparing Evans against Martinez or Grovetown right now, you've probably already looked at list prices, maybe run a mortgage calculator, and formed a rough sense of what monthly ownership costs. What that comparison almost never accounts for is that the property tax bill attached to the listing you're touring belongs to the current owner, not to you. And in Columbia County specifically, the mechanics of how that bill gets recalculated for a new owner are in the middle of a genuine, still-unresolved policy shift.
The Reset Nobody Puts on the Listing Sheet
Georgia's homestead exemption reduces the taxable portion of a primary residence's assessed value, and it can accumulate real protection over years of ownership. The catch is that it does not transfer at closing. Once a deed changes hands, the seller's exemption is gone, and the new owner has to file their own application with the county before it applies to them. That means the tax figure printed on an MLS sheet, which reflects the seller's exemption and however many years of accumulated protection they've built up, tells you almost nothing about what you'll actually owe.
Columbia County adds a second layer most buyers don't expect. Properties here are reassessed every year, not only when they change hands. The county's own tax office confirms this directly: assessed values are revisited annually based on market activity, not frozen between sales. Georgia calculates that assessed value at 40 percent of what the county's appraisers determine to be fair market value. Take a $300,000 home as an example, the kind of math the county's own guidance walks through: the assessed value comes out to $120,000, and that's the number the millage rate gets applied to, before any exemption is subtracted.
In unincorporated Columbia County, where Evans sits, the combined millage rate currently runs around 25.7 mills. Incorporated areas within the county run closer to 27.9 mills. Multiply that against an assessed value with no homestead exemption yet on file, and you can see why a new owner's first bill often looks nothing like the number the seller was paying.
What Columbia County Tried to Build Instead
Opting out of HB 581 didn't mean Columbia County walked away from tax relief entirely. County Manager Scott Johnson was blunt about the tradeoffs at a public hearing that February, noting that a statewide cap on assessments doesn't automatically translate into lower bills unless the lost revenue gets replaced somehow, whether through a local sales tax option or another mechanism the county controls directly.
What the county proposed instead was its own version, an $8,000 homestead exemption from assessed value for county property taxes, covering homesteads on up to five contiguous acres. That measure needed voter approval in a November 2025 special election to take effect for the 2026 tax year, and it applies only to the county portion of the bill, not school district or municipal taxes, which typically make up the largest share of what a homeowner pays. If you're buying in Evans this year, it's worth confirming directly with the Columbia County Tax Commissioner's office, at 630 Ronald Reagan Drive, whether that local exemption is active and how it applies to your specific parcel, since this is a recent enough change that even current listings may not reflect it accurately.
Not everyone at that February hearing agreed with the direction the county was heading. One resident summed up the anxiety in the room plainly: "You are going to have a major problem with price increases, residential taxes, non-homestead taxes and business taxes." Whether or not that turns out to be the full picture, it captures why this decision drew a crowd in the first place.
The County Median Hides the Evans Number
Portal sites tend to quote a single county-wide tax figure, and that number obscures more than it reveals once you look at individual cities inside Columbia County. Recent county tax data breaks it down this way:
| City | Median Annual Tax Bill | Effective Tax Rate |
|---|---|---|
| Evans | ~$3,331 | Higher than county median |
| Grovetown | Varies by parcel | ~1.02% |
| Thomson | ~$1,775 | ~0.98% |
Evans homeowners carry a median bill nearly double Thomson's, inside the same county, under the same state exemption rules. If you're pricing a move based on a countywide average pulled from a portal site, you're likely underestimating what an Evans purchase actually costs to hold, particularly once your own homestead exemption resets to zero on day one.
That gap matters more given where Evans values currently sit. As of May 2026, the average Evans home value tracked by Zillow's home value index was $408,329, up 1.3 percent over the prior year. Redfin's data for the three months ending May 2026 showed Evans home prices up 8.2 percent year over year, with a median sale price of $407,000 and homes going under contract in an average of 24 days, down from 53 days the year before. Rising values feed directly into rising assessed values under Columbia County's annual reassessment process, which means the tax reset a new buyer faces isn't a one-time event tied only to the sale. It's part of an ongoing recalculation the county performs on every parcel, every year.
The 2027 Reset Coming for Everyone
Here's where the timing gets genuinely interesting for anyone buying in Evans this year rather than next. Governor Kemp signed the HOME Act, Senate Bill 33, into law on May 11, 2026. That law eliminates the opt-out option entirely. Starting in 2027, the inflation-rate cap on homestead assessed value growth becomes mandatory for every county, city, and school district in Georgia, using 2026 values as the baseline year. Columbia County's opt-out, and whatever local exemption it built to replace HB 581, gets swept into a statewide system it no longer controls.
Practically, that means the assessed value your Evans home carries at the close of 2026 becomes the reference point every future increase gets measured against once the mandatory cap kicks in. A purchase that closes and gets its first assessment locked in during 2026 starts that clock from a different position than one that closes in early 2027, after reassessment has already run its course under the new mandatory framework. The law also opens the door to a Local Homestead Option Sales Tax, which counties can put before voters starting in late 2027 to fund further relief, adding one more variable to a system that's been in motion since that February 2025 meeting.
What to Ask Before You Write an Offer
Before assuming the tax line on a listing sheet is a reliable budgeting number, ask the listing agent whether the current owner has a homestead exemption on file and how long they've held it. Ask what the assessed value was on the most recent notice, not just the tax bill, since that's the figure your own exemption application will apply against once you own the home. Mark April 1 on your calendar as the standard filing deadline for a new homestead exemption, and note that Georgia's 45-day appeal window from your notice of assessment is also, under recent state guidance, a secondary window for filing in certain reassessment situations. If you're buying this year, a direct call to the Columbia County Tax Commissioner's office to confirm the current status of the county's local exemption is worth the ten minutes it takes.
FAQ
Does the homestead exemption apply to new construction in Evans? Yes, once you own and occupy the home as your primary residence as of January 1 of the tax year, the same filing rules apply regardless of whether the home is a resale or newly built.
What if I already claim a homestead exemption on another Georgia property? You can only hold one homestead exemption at a time, and it must apply to your actual primary residence. Moving means reapplying at the new address and notifying the county the exemption should be removed from the old one.
Is Columbia County's local exemption guaranteed to apply to my purchase? Not automatically. Because this exemption followed a 2025 opt-out decision and a subsequent local vote, confirm its current status and terms directly with the Columbia County Tax Commissioner's office before treating it as certain in your budget.
Property tax mechanics like these rarely show up on a listing sheet, but they shape what a home actually costs to hold long after closing day. If you're weighing an Evans purchase against another CSRA neighborhood, The Moss Group can walk through the specific numbers for a property you're considering. Request a complimentary home valuation or schedule a consultation with Lisa to get a clear picture before you write an offer.
