Check Your Temperature—You Might Have an Assessment Fever

When a recent survey asked respondents if they’d ever appealed their property taxes, the resounding answer was that it would be a waste of time; it wouldn’t do any good. Many commenters pointed out the system was confusing, the websites they had to use were difficult to search through, and that there was no direct way to compare properties. 

“Make it easier,” they said. 

The property tax system is nationally known to be confusing and unfair due to many Americans being overassessed, leading to an overcharge on many property tax bills. As the knowledge of inaccurate assessments continues to be brought to light by organizations such as The Just Accounting for Health project (which Strong Towns is a part of), more and more property owners are making moves to investigate and find if their property has been overassessed. Yet, many find themselves lost in a digital world of poor web design and perplexing data that just doesn’t seem to add up.

“The ingredients are all there,” said Alex Alsup, vice president of research and development at Regrid, a property data and location intelligence company. “But if you don’t know how to combine them to bake the ‘assessment cake,’ the ingredients on their own are not going to be very helpful to you.”

In light of the property tax issues residents face in Alsup’s hometown of Detroit, he and his team at Regrid have put together an interactive map called the Detroit Assessment Gauge that gives homeowners a new tool to easily click and check if their home assessment compares to other properties on the block. The higher an assessment is past the census tract average, the redder the parcel appears. Regrid’s map has the ability to take homeowners one step closer to appealing their assessments by making the data of their home easily accessible and printable. 

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(Click to enlarge. Source: Regrid.)

“What we are hoping to do with the Detroit Assessment Gauge is create an easy temperature check,” said Alsup, “where you can look at your home and other homes around you and easily see if inconsistent assessment is something you need to be worried about.” 

Regrid defines inconsistent assessments as two homes within close proximity that appear to be in similar condition and sitting on similar sized lots, but their assessment scores differ greatly. The below image from the Detroit Assessment Gauge report represents two real homes (depicted here as an illustration to protect the residents’ privacy) in the west side of Detroit that sit on the same block, but one is assessed at twice the amount of its neighbor. 

(Source: Regrid / Betsy Cooper)

“It's a good tool for property owners but it's also a good tool for us,” said Alvin Horhn, deputy CFO and assessor for the city of Detroit. “I think it's a quick visual reference of properties that are 25% over the census tract average or 50% over the census tract average.”

It’s important to note this map does not account for all possible avenues of overassessment: It only looks at the possibility of inconsistent assessments relating to overassessment. There are many elements that can contribute to an overassessment that are difficult to observe through third-party data. 

That’s where it’s important for a homeowner to use their judgment with regard to their situation. As Alsup put it, a hypothetical user might say, “‘I look okay here [on the assessment map], but I know I have $30,000 of repair work that needs to be done. As a result, I’m overassessed.’”

Detroit has been subject to a significant degree of tax foreclosure over the years. It’s been a harvesting ground for non-resident investors, many of whom are being called slumlords. Through research from sources like the University of Michigan, it’s apparent that many landlords reap as much rent as possible while failing to maintain the rental property and not paying property taxes. This cycle continues until the property goes back to a tax foreclosure sale, where another “slumlord” is likely to repeat the habit. It has been a pillaging of wealth, as Detroit residents struggle under the weight of property taxes when many of them qualify as property tax exempt. 

When the Detroit Assessment Gauge was created, Alsup said the team was able to observe the difference of overassessments between homeowners and landlord-owned homes. They discovered that if a home is assessed over the census tract average, it is most likely a homeowner’s home. When they flipped the view to properties owned by landlords, it appeared that most were underassessed. Within the report, Alsup speculates that some investors or landlords are more likely to fight for an assessment appeal than a typical homeowner. Investors or landlords generally have more access to resources, such as attorneys, that better enable them to fight for a reassessment. Yet, even with homeowners generally carrying the majority of the property tax weight due to inconsistent assessments, landlords are more likely to be tax delinquent. Alsup hopes the Assessment Gauge Map may prove to be a useful tool for homeowners that will help bring a much-needed balance to overassessments. 

While Detroit’s tax foreclosure epidemic may be unique, overassessments and confusing property tax systems are not. Regrid has made it possible for any county to recreate their interactive map for local property owners to utilize.

“We’d love to be doing this in other cities around the country,” said Alsup. If you’d like to see an Assessment Gauge in your city, contact Regrid using the form at the bottom of the report. To follow the national story on property tax inequities, check out The Just Accounting for Health Project, a study and movement that will continue to bring to light to and change the array of property tax inequities riddled throughout our systems. 

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