A buyer cross-shopping Voorhees and Cherry Hill this year will find the same spreadsheet math on every portal. Cherry Hill's effective property tax rate sits around 2.6 percent. Voorhees runs closer to 2.8 to 3 percent. Cherry Hill wins, case closed, pick the lower number and move on.
Except the actual tax bills don't sort that cleanly, and the gap that does exist is being pulled from two directions at once. One involves a shuttered mall still waiting on a state tax credit decision. The other involves a school district that already voted to raise taxes to cover a double-digit jump in health insurance costs. Neither shows up in a rate comparison, and both are already reshaping what a homeowner in either town writes a check for this year.
The Rate Quoted Isn't the Bill Paid
Here's the part that trips up buyers who stop at the headline percentage: a lower rate on a higher-value home can still produce a similar or larger bill than a higher rate on a cheaper one.
| Effective rate (2025) | Average annual bill | |
|---|---|---|
| Cherry Hill | roughly 2.6% | just under $9,900 (2025, per state data reported by Patch) |
| Voorhees | roughly 2.76% to 3.06% depending on the source | commonly cited near $11,000 |
Cherry Hill's rate advantage is real. So is the fact that its average bill has still landed meaningfully below Voorhees's in every recent dataset we checked, including New Jersey Department of Community Affairs figures reported by Patch in February 2026. The rate difference and the bill difference agree here. What buyers miss is why the rate differs in the first place, because that reason is not fixed.
Why the Rate Is Lower in Cherry Hill
Property tax rates aren't set by comparing towns to each other. Each municipality divides its budget by the total assessed value of everything taxable inside its borders, homes and businesses alike. More commercial value in the mix means residents cover a smaller share.
Cherry Hill has a lot of that commercial value, anchored by the Cherry Hill Mall, which has kept attracting tenants (a Dick's House of Sport was among those in the pipeline as of late 2025) and a wide corridor of big-box retail and corporate offices. That commercial base is doing real work lowering the residential rate.
Voorhees has the same kind of anchor property. It just isn't working right now.
The Mall That Explains the Gap
The Voorhees Town Center, most residents still call it by its old name, Echelon Mall, opened in 1970 and was once the second-largest enclosed mall in South Jersey, behind only Cherry Hill's. It has been in slow decline since the early 2000s, and a fire in the food court on April 19, 2024 closed most of the interior retail space entirely. Boscov's has stayed open. The rest of the mall has not.
A dark anchor property doesn't just look empty, it stops generating the commercial ratables that keep a residential tax rate down. That's a meaningful part of why Voorhees leans harder on homeowners than Cherry Hill does for its municipal and county costs, a structural pattern that shows up in county tax abstract data analyzed by the local news outlet 70and73.com.
That's the backstory. The current chapter is still being written.
The Deal That Could Flip Voorhees's Numbers
In October 2025, the Voorhees Township Committee unanimously approved a redevelopment agreement with Hoboken Brownstone Co., a North Jersey development firm, for the Town Center site. The plan calls for 317 new residential units, a mix of market-rate and affordable townhomes and apartments, more than 38,000 square feet of new commercial and entertainment space, and a parking garage with 1,300 to 1,500 spaces. Company president George Vallone has put the total investment north of $220 million.
Mayor Michael Mignogna has also pointed to a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes arrangement built into the deal, structured to help cover redevelopment and municipal service costs in a way intended to ease the burden on existing residents, according to reporting by PhillyVoice.
None of it is guaranteed. As of February 2026, Vallone told the Philadelphia Inquirer the project hinges on a $90 million New Jersey state tax credit the company has applied for.
"If not, we walk."
That's not a small contingency. It's the difference between new commercial ratables arriving in Voorhees over the next several years and the mall sitting exactly as it is now. A follow-up report in April 2026 described the credit decision as expected by summer. Summer has since come and gone without a public announcement turning up in our research, which means a buyer weighing Voorhees's tax trajectory five years out is still making a bet on an approval that, as of this writing in September 2026, hasn't been confirmed either way.
Cherry Hill's Cushion Has a Crack Too
Cherry Hill's advantage looks sturdier because its commercial base is stronger, not because its budget pressures are smaller. On April 28, 2026, the Cherry Hill Board of Education voted 7-1 to adopt a $307 million budget for the 2026-27 school year, a plan that raises the district's tax levy by 7.4 percent and cuts roughly 70 staff positions to close a budget gap district officials put at nearly $29 million, according to reporting by the Philadelphia Inquirer and 6abc. The gap traced almost entirely to insurance costs the district doesn't control: a 19.9 percent jump in medical premiums, a 27 percent jump in prescription drug costs, and rising transportation expenses on top of both.
For a home at the district's average assessment of $227,000, the increase adds about $420 a year. Because New Jersey school budgets run on a July-to-June fiscal year while property tax bills run January to December, the district's own budget materials note that increase is being phased in across two calendar-year tax bills, meaning part of it is already on Cherry Hill homeowners' bills this year, not a future possibility.
Two towns, two structural stories, and only one of them has fully played out. A buyer comparing today's rate sheet is comparing a Cherry Hill number that just moved and a Voorhees number that's still waiting to.
What This Actually Means If You're Choosing Between the Two
A tax rate tells you what a town's commercial base looked like on the day the rate was set, not what it will look like when you've lived there five years. If you're weighing Voorhees against Cherry Hill, a few questions matter more than the headline percentage:
- Ask whether the town's largest commercial property is stable, growing, or in transition. In Voorhees, that means tracking the Town Center's tax credit decision, since it directly affects future ratables.
- Ask what share of your total bill goes to schools versus municipal and county costs. A town where schools eat a smaller share of the levy, like Voorhees currently does relative to Cherry Hill, is often leaning more heavily on residential property for everything else.
- Check the timing of upcoming school budget votes in either town before assuming this year's number holds next year.
- Remember that assessed value drives your individual bill more than the town-wide rate does. If you think your assessment doesn't match market value once you own the home, both Camden County towns allow appeals through the county board of taxation, typically by an April 1 deadline.
None of this means one town is the better buy. It means the rate comparison you did on a portal last week already has an expiration date, and the mechanism behind it is worth understanding before you write an offer around it.
A Few Common Questions
Does a lower tax rate always mean a lower tax bill? Not necessarily. Rate and bill move together only when home values are similar. Cherry Hill's lower rate has produced a lower average bill in recent data, but that's partly because its median assessments have stayed close to Voorhees's despite the rate gap, not because the rate alone guarantees it.
When will Voorhees know if the Town Center redevelopment moves forward? The developer applied for the state tax credit in early 2026 and initially expected a decision within months, with a later report pointing to summer 2026. As of this writing in September 2026, no public confirmation of the outcome has surfaced in our research.
Did Cherry Hill's school tax increase actually happen? Yes. The board adopted it on April 28, 2026, by a 7-1 vote, along with roughly 70 staff position cuts. It's a real, enacted 7.4 percent levy increase, not a proposal still up in the air, and it's already being phased into 2026 tax bills.
If you're trying to figure out what either of these tax pictures means for a specific address, block, or budget, that's exactly the kind of local detail a rate comparison online can't give you. Ray Moorhouse Real Estate Group works both sides of this county line every week and can walk you through what a particular property in Voorhees or Cherry Hill is actually likely to cost you, not just what the town-wide average suggests.
