It's no secret that New Jersey homeowners are hit with some of the highest property taxes in the nation. But just how high, relative to other parts of the country, might be a bit of a shock.

A typical homeowner in Bibb County, Ala., paid just $228 in property taxes in 2013, according to an analysis by Zillow, the real estate website. Compare that to someone paying the median in Paramus or Ridgewood in Bergen, who shelled out $9,546 -- about 45 times as much.

Bergen and Bibb lie on opposite ends of a list of median property tax rates nationally. Bergen was third-highest in the country, and the highest in New Jersey, while Bibb joined several other Alabama counties boasting some of the very lowest property tax bills for single-family homes.

Bergen, meanwhile, is one of several New York City-area counties dominating the top 10. Those counties had annual property taxes several times the 2013 national median of $2,132, based on the Zillow analysis, which examined counties in the 50 largest metro areas for which sufficient data was available.

Elsewhere in New Jersey, however, property tax bills, while nowhere near the lowest in the country, were somewhat closer to the national median, according to figures compiled by NJ Advance Media in February (NJ Advance Media looked at average county bills, not the median figure used by Zillow). The average bill in Cumberland in 2013, for instance, was just a little over $3,700 a year, while in nearby Salem, the average was about $4,800.

Per Zillow, here are the counties with the 10 highest and 10 lowest median property tax bills in 2013:

Highest:

Westchester, N.Y., $13,842

Rockland, N.Y., $10,550

Bergen, NJ, $9,546

Essex, N.J., $9,288

Nassau, N.Y., $9,091

Passaic, N.J., $8,978

Union, N.J., $8,926

Morris, N.J., $8,549

Hudson, N.J., $8,407

Hunterdon, N.J., $8,392

Lowest:

Tunica, Miss., $216

Bibb, Ala., $228

Walker, Ala., $244

Blount, Ala, $344

Amelia, Va., $358

Butler, Pa., $397

Lincoln, Okla., $402

Fayette, Tenn., $410

Meriwether, Ga., $457

Saint Clair, Ala., $470

Paul Milo may be reached at pmilo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @PaulMilo2. Find NJ.com on Facebook.