Your property taxes are calculated as a percentage of your property’s assessed value. If your property’s value is assessed incorrectly high, it will leave you with a property tax bill that is much too high.
- Carefully review the property assessment that your county sends you. Pay careful attention to the dates that they have set for you to file appeals.
- Collect information on recent sales of comparable properties in the area near your property. Assessors typically use sale comps as their primary valuation tool. If you can show different comps, you might be able to justify a lower price. Alternately, if you have a vacant rental property and they are assessing it as if it is occupied, you might also be able to renegotiate the assessed value downward if you can prove that the property’s income is different from what they assumed.
- Book a meeting with your county assessor for an informal discussion. When you sit down with them, have your evidence handy. Your goal should be to understand why they assessed your property they way that they did and to convince them to reduce your assessed value without you having to file a formal appeal.
- File for a formal appeal using your county’s official method and pay their fee for an appeal if you are not able to work something out in your informal meeting.
- Attend the appeal and argue your case. To win your appeal, you will need to have strong evidence to back up your argument. What you learned about the assessor’s strategy in your informal meeting should help you argue your point here.