Real Estate Tax Assessments – What to Expect and What You Can Do

In the last few years, city real estate tax assessments have increased 10 or 12 percent. A lot of this is due to the fact that real estate assessments were fairly stagnant while the market rebounded from the housing crisis. The city is trying to catch up and realize that market value has increased significantly and are reassessing accordingly.

If you feel that you were unfairly assessed based on the determined value of similar homes in your area, you can appeal your assessment.

There are three ways to appeal when your assessment arrives around the end of June (all information here comes directly from the city assessor’s website).

• Office Review – A written appeal must be filed with the City Assessor’s Office no later than July 31. The Office Review Application and filing instructions can be obtained on found on the Forms page of our website. The property owner will have the opportunity to submit any information that demonstrates a more supportable fair market value of the property in question, or to submit comparable assessment data that indicates the subject assessment is inequitable with similar classed properties.

  All office review applications with submitted data will be analyzed by a staff appraiser, and the applicant will receive a written response.

• Board of Equalization (BOE) – The deadline for applications will be November 30 of the current calendar year and cases will be heard beginning in January of the following calendar year. The Board of Equalization Application can be found on the Forms page of our web site.
  

• Direct Appeal to the Court – An owner may, at their discretion, appeal the real estate assessment directly to the Circuit Court of the city of Richmond. This filing must be made within three years of the assessment year. However, no owner may make any such filing for a year other than the current year unless such owner has provided to the City Assessor, the Director of the Department of Finance or the City Council written notice of disagreement with the assessment during the applicable tax year.