5 Action Steps You Can Take To Start Changing the Property Tax System in Your Town

Three years ago, a homeowner opened his property tax bill to see it had increased by a significant amount. That man, Joe Minicozzi of Urban3, then began to take the smallest next steps to figure out what happened. 

He started with talking to his neighbor, and asking if he’d also experienced a shocking rise in property tax. Then he began to conduct research in his spare time, gathering data from a handful of houses in his hometown of Ashville, North Carolina. He talked with his local assessor, asking him questions about the property tax system, and the data he’d discovered. Over a couple years, his deepening curiosity grew into a driving force behind the Just Accounting for Health coalition, which now challenges the equity of the property tax system. 

The Just Accounting for Health research team performed an extensive, regional-level analysis covering 18 different counties. They discovered that in Western North Carolina, higher-priced homes are systematically assessed for less than their actual market value, while lower priced homes are overassessed. Consequently, this leads some of the richest residents in the region to underpay on their property taxes, while those least likely to afford it are overcharged. In Buncombe County alone, the richest homeowners saved $46 million because of underassessments in 2021. 

Around the same time Minicozzi’s research team at Urban3 was putting together the puzzle of these inequities, The New York Times published an article stating that the property tax system is underassessing expensive homes, and overrassessing the least expensive homes throughout the United States, according to nation wide research conducted by Dr. Christopher Berry of the University of Chicago. 

At that moment, Minicozzi and his research team at Urban3 realized that it wasn’t just their home state of Western North Carolina facing property tax inequities. The problem is everywhere. 

The Just Accounting for Health coalition has been researching and reporting on property tax inequities for the past 18 months. But the real work is just getting started—and it starts with you. Because it’s going to take citizen action to change these systems.

Below, you’ll find a list of steps and resources to get started investigating the property tax system in your hometown. And don’t worry, you don’t need to be connected to a data analytics firm to do it, nor do you need some rare degree of expertise in the matter. You can start with just being curious. Take whichever action suits you best, in whatever order works for you.  

Action: Know How The Property Tax System Works

What is a “sales ratio,” and how does it relate to property taxes? You’ll want to know. Check out this video for a quick explainer on the basics of how the property tax system works.  

Something you’ll need to know: even though the problem of inequitable assessments exists throughout the nation, each county and state has slightly different rules and processes. 

For example, in Buncombe County, North Carolina, homes need to be assessed at 100% market value. So, if a home is assessed either below or under what it sold for on the market, the assessment is incorrect. But if you’re in Detroit, Michigan state law stipulates that homes should be assessed at 50% of their market value. You’ll need to check out your local county’s website to find out what applies to you. 

Want to take a deeper dive into property tax education? The International Association of Assessing Officers provides a whole library of educational resources. It’s also where your local assessor got a lot of their education on the property tax system.

Action: Understand the Appeal Process

One way we may want to challenge the property tax system is by appealing the assessment on our own home. According to research from Just Accounting for Health, this is an action that owners of the least expensive homes don’t usually take.

“[Property Taxes] are a pretty obscure topic,” said Dr. Christopher Berry in an interview with Strong Towns. “Most people—surprisingly, given how expensive property taxes are—most people don't really look carefully at their bill.” 

When your property is assessed, you should receive a notice in the mail letting you know of the deadline and rules for an appeal. These are generally tight deadlines, so you’ll want to be ready to take immediate action in building your case for the appeal. 

The easiest way to build a case is to take a look at what information the assessment letter lists about your property. You’ll want to check if the data is correct. For example, maybe it mentions you have a basement. Unless noted otherwise, the assessor assumes you have a basement that’s in good shape, but let’s say your basement is actually prone to flooding and has a lot of damage. In this case, providing that information may help you lower your assessment ratio. (See “Action: Do Some Research” below for more options to build your case.)

Some individuals have even appealed unfair assessments for homes of people they don’t know by putting together property data found online though the assessor’s website or their local Geographic Information System (GIS) website. (Many people don’t know this is a completely legal way to hold your government accountable.) 

In Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Northside neighbors mobilized to raise awareness of property tax inequities within their community and ultimately brought about a $7 million reduction in home assessed values. One of the actions they did to reap this victory: one resident filed 144 appeals on behalf of other property owners.

In Des Moines, Iowa, one resident filed 23 appeals for the richest homeowners in his county, stating they had been underassessed. 

Action: Do Some Research, and Do The Math

The majority of lower-priced homes are overassessed, and higher-priced homes are underassessed. But how do you document this trend locally, and how do you show that to your local assessor or other curious people? Whether you're just appealing your own property, or want to take a deeper look at the homes around you, you’ll want to find comparable properties. 

By “comparable properties,” we mean homes that are similar to one another. They don’t have to be in the same neighborhood, or the same side of town, but they should have similar external characteristics. 

There’s many ways to discover comparable properties. You could drive around your town and write down the addresses of homes that look similar, or check your local newspaper; generally, there’s a regularly published article about recent real estate sales. In Asheville, the Asheville Citizen-Times publishes the most expensive home sales annually. Minicozzi did his own small study on those homes, which you can check out here. 

Once you have your comparable properties, go to your county’s Geographic Information System (GIS) database to perform your comparable sales research and look at the “property cards.” Once you have found the property values (probably listed by value per acre and building value), you’ll do a little math to discover the percentage of an overassessment or underassessment. Minicozzi created a cloneable spreadsheet (the exact one he used for his small-scale most expensive home sales study) where you can plug in your data, and it’ll do the math for you. You’ll just need to plug your own county’s tax rate into the formula. Check that spreadsheet out here. And if you have any questions, or just want to share what you found with us, send a message through the Just Accounting for Health website. 

Just as the rules for every county’s property tax system are different, so might the access points be for finding property data. The websites are not always easy to sort through, so don’t get discouraged if it’s too confusing. If it is convoluted and you can’t find what you’re looking for, you can always take the next Action and ask your assessor. 

Also, for a broader perspective on your county, check out Dr. Berry’s website. The interactive tools Berry has created offer a good preliminary sense of whether there are systemic inequities in property tax assessment where you live.

Action: Talk to Your Assessor 

Your local assessor is there to not only assess properties, but to also answer questions. Check out their website, and you’ll find a way to contact them. (We’ve hopped on the phone with assessors from a handful of different states, and they’ve been happy to chat about how the property tax system works, and where you can find information). 

Feel free to ask them what the process is, the rules for appeal, or if there are other educational aspects you should be aware of. You can even ask them what they used as comparables for your property.

Of course, we always want to be respectful of someone's time, so try to answer as many questions on your own before calling up your local assessor. Assessors have a big job on their hands, and generally their offices are understaffed and it can be difficult to keep up with the paperwork. They’ll appreciate your curiosity and independent interest in diving into the subject! (Seriously, because not everyone finds property taxes all that interesting to read about in their leisure time.) Want to know a little bit more about what it’s like to work as an assessor? Check out this article. 

Sometimes, an assessor might not respond positively to research curious people have conducted. If that’s the case for you, you can contact the official who appointed the assessor to their position, or approach the city counsel with your data and research. Minicozzi did this with his research team. In response to the research presented, the city council created an Ad Hoc committee to address the local property tax inequities. 

If talking to elected officials seems to be a dead end, you can always turn to local reporters. Check out these two videos for some advice on making your research newsworthy: 

Action: Get Connected

Coalitions and groups fighting property tax inequities are popping up throughout the nation. There might be people already challenging the property tax system in your area whom you can connect with. In addition to the Just Accounting for Health project in North Carolina, there's the Coalition for Property Tax Justice in Detroit, Tax Equity Now in New York, and many more. 

You could also reach out to other community groups who are already working to hold leaders accountable and advocating for a fairer, more equitable, more sustainable community for everyone. For instance, the Racial Justice Coalition in Asheville, North Carolina, didn’t start out their mission directly advocating for a more equitable property tax system, but the issues are relevant to their core mission, so they’ve since joined the Just Accounting for Health project. 

If you believe that your community could benefit from a deeper analysis regarding property valuations and taxation policies, Minicozzi’s team at Urban3 would be happy to talk to you. If more communities join this work, the more effective nationwide reform efforts will be! Click here to contact Urban3. 

Changing the property tax system to be fair and transparent can be a daunting task if we try to go about it alone. It’s a large, complicated system that’s well over hundreds of years old. But for those hundreds of years, it has continued to overtax those who own lower-priced homes, while undercharging those with the most expensive. Change happens when we take small steps. When we look around ourselves, and our community, and decide to do the smallest next thing, we can make a difference. To stay up to date with what’s happening with the property tax system, sign up for email alerts with the Just Accounting for Health project.

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