How to Challenge Your Home' s Property Tax Assessment

Make Sure Your Assessment is Accurate

With home and property values fluctuating wildly, the last thing a homeowner wants is to be paying more in real estate taxes than they should be. By some estimates, as many as 60% of all homes are over-assessed, meaning the homeowners are over-paying their real estate taxes. A careful check of your assessment can uncover mistakes and inappropriate assumptions that can lower your official assessment, and lower your property taxes. Here's how.

Things You'll Need

• Information on your home' s market value from your property tax assessment office

Instructions

1. **Understand the Assessment Process**

   Homes are usually assessed by the local county property assessor's office, though some cities and towns do their own assessments. Find the website for the assessor's office in your area, and become familiar with the timing of assessments, and the process for filing an appeal.

   Make sure to become familiar with deadlines. If you file an appeal a day late, then you won't be considered for the current round of review, and may have to wait a year or longer before your challenge is considered.

2. **Get Your Assessment Records**

   Your assessment office will make available detailed records of how your home' s value has been determined. Many offices even make property assessment records available online.

   Check these over carefully.

   Part of the determination is based on your home itself, considering information like number of bedrooms, square feet of the house, amount of land, and so on. Check these very carefully. For instance, a mistake in the home' s square footage may have been made decades ago, and been carried over in the records ever since.

   The rest of your assessment is based on the value of comparable homes in your neighborhood. But is your neighbor's home really directly comparable to yours? Perhaps they have features that you don't that gives the houses different market values, even though the assessor treated them as identical. Document all aspects of the assessment that look erroneous to you.

3. **Make Your Case**

   Some jurisdictions allow an informal meeting between you and your assessor as a first step. Sometimes, this is all it takes. Make your case during the meeting, provide documentation, and you may find you end up with a lower assessment, and less taxes.

   Many jurisdictions follow a more formal procedure, usually involving filing assessment appeal documents as a first step, and perhaps an appearance before an appeals hearing board as a next step. Your local assessment office will provide the details of the process in either case.

   Most of the hearings are public. You may want to sit in on someone else's hearing to get familiar with the procedures.

4. **Consider Professional Help**

   A professional appraiser can give you an independent estimate of your home' s market value, and this can be an influential piece of information to have for your assessment appeal.

   A property tax specialist can also be a big help. Many consultants operate on a contingency basis, which means you only have to pay them if they actually save you money on your property taxes.

   If you have a real estate agent, he or she can probably refer you to an appropriate specialist for an appraisal, or for help with your assessment.

Tips & Warnings

• Keep your cool. Assessor's have a tough job, and they appreciate people who treat them professionally and courteously.