The ad-valorem rate itself is a flat 1.0808% in EVERY Davis tax-rate area — 1% Prop 13 base plus the DJUSD 2000 bond (0.0040), the DJUSD 2018 bond (0.0560) and Los Rios CCD (0.0208). Verified against real FY2025-26 bills across all sixty Davis tax-rate areas, city and unincorporated alike. So the reason Davis runs above the Yolo County median of about 1.32% is NOT the rate: it is the flat charges stacked on top. The spread inside the city is wider than the gap between cities — roughly 1.33% at the 25th percentile up to about 1.98% at the 90th — which is the fingerprint of fixed dollars, not of a high percentage. Budget separately for the one-time supplemental bill that arrives about a year after closing.

Read off real FY2025-26 Davis tax bills, the fixed charges run: Measure N school parcel tax 797.18, Measure G 235.56, the special library tax 172.22, landscape and lighting 56.28, and the Measure O open-space tax 24.00 — about 1,285 dollars a year before any CFD. Then the community facilities districts: DJUSD CFD No. 1 at 326.60 sits on essentially every Davis parcel (a 50% exemption takes it to 163.30). The City of Davis CFD No. 1 varies by neighborhood — about 38 in Evergreen, 98 in Mace Ranch, 219 in Oakshade — and is absent in the older core. DJUSD CFD No. 2 is the unpredictable one: it is annexation-based, so three neighbours on one street can pay 1,321.60, 948.26 and nothing at all.

Because these are fixed dollars, a 400k Davis house pays the same school charges as a 900k one — and a much higher effective rate. CFD No. 2 in particular cannot be inferred from the subdivision; check the specific parcel.

A Davis mailing address is not the same as being inside the city, and the difference is expensive. El Macero, Willowbank and the rural parcels west of town sit in county service areas that bill their utilities ON THE TAX BILL rather than monthly. A real El Macero FY2025-26 bill carries CSA water usage of 2,092.02 — the range across parcels runs roughly 1,275 to 3,350 — plus CSA sewer 612.52, streets 180.00, operations 50.70 and East Davis Fire 277.96. That is why El Macero shows the highest effective tax rate in all of Yolo County at about 1.63%. Willowbank parcels carry East Davis Fire plus a 35.00 CSA charge; the rural west side carries Springlake Fire near 133.

These parcels get no city landscape-and-lighting or open-space charge — but the water line alone can dwarf everything it replaces. Never assume a monthly water bill; read the tax bill.

Davis sits on flat, irrigated valley floor with no wildland interface inside the city, so it is largely outside the High and Very High zones on CAL FIRE’s 2025 maps and most homes remain insurable on the standard admitted market. That is a real advantage over the foothill markets east and west of here — but still pull the parcel’s zone and get a written quote before removing your contingency.

Valley Clean Energy, the locally governed community choice aggregator, has been the default electricity provider in Davis since June 2018 and appears as a line item on the PG&E bill. It is worth understanding what that does and does not change: VCE buys the power, PG&E still owns the poles and does the billing, so a Davis bill tracks PG&E territory pricing rather than the far cheaper municipal utilities elsewhere in the region. Budget in the PG&E range — roughly $290/mo at 750 kWh as of June 2026 — not the SMUD or Roseville Electric range.