Your county valued your house without ever going inside it.
Assessors have to value thousands of homes at a time, from records and drive-bys. When they get yours wrong, the only person who will notice is you — and every jurisdiction in the country has a process for telling them so. This is the tool for doing it properly.
Free to build · $149 once if you export, never a subscription · you file it yourself and keep 100% of the savings
Never appealed before and not sure it applies to you? Start with the basics ↓
A real appeal structure with the identifying details changed. Every figure is computed from the comparable sales in the deck, not typed in.
Nobody is coming to check whether your assessment is fair.
Most homeowners have never appealed, and assume it is something you need a lawyer and a grievance for. It is closer to correcting a billing error — a routine administrative process the assessor’s office runs every single year and fully expects you to use.
Your assessment is an estimate made in bulk
Assessors value entire neighbourhoods at once, using sales data, permits and exterior photographs. Nobody looked at your original wiring, your sloping lot or the bathroom that hasn’t been touched since the Eisenhower administration. That gap between the model and your actual house is the whole opportunity.
You are not suing anyone
You are filing a form and attaching evidence. No lawyer, no courtroom, no confrontation. In much of the country the first round is decided entirely on the documents — you upload, they read, they answer. Check your own state in the box above.
A win keeps paying after you stop working
This is the part people miss. Your reduced value generally stands until your jurisdiction reappraises, which in most places is every three to six years. The example above saves $6,101 a year — across a four‑year cycle that is $24,404 from one afternoon’s work.
The appeal itself is three steps, and the third one is optional in much of the country.
If you have never done this before, here is the shape of it. The names and the dates change from county to county, but the sequence almost never does.
- 1An afternoon
Put the appeal together
This is the part you do here: your parcel record, adjusted comparable sales, a uniformity study and your own photographs, assembled into one document you can hand to anybody.
- 2By your deadline
File it for informal review
In much of the country this is an upload, not a meeting — you submit the deck with your supporting documents and wait for the assessor’s office to answer. This is where an appeal can end: a revised value in the mail and nothing further to do.
- 3Only if needed
Ask for a hearing
If the informal answer doesn’t satisfy you, you can take it to the board and walk them through the same deck in person. Whether you end up here depends on your county and on how the first round goes. Either way you arrive with your argument already written.
Every one of those steps has a date attached to it, and no two counties agree on what the dates are. Enter your address and we show you yours — your deadline, the form your jurisdiction uses, and whether the informal review can be filed online without you appearing at all.
Four steps, about forty minutes.
You supply the numbers off your assessment notice, photographs, and what you know about your own property. Everything that is arithmetic gets done for you.
Enter the record
Copy the appraised land and improvement values, square footage, lot size and notice date straight off your notice. We flag the errors worth attacking.
Run the numbers
The sales grid adjusts each comparable for size, age, lot and condition. A separate uniformity study compares your appraised dollars per square foot to your neighbours’.
Document the story
Guided prompts for build quality, deferred maintenance, and site constraints — the arguments that move an assessor once the arithmetic is on the table.
Export and file — often without appearing
Download an editable PowerPoint and a print-ready PDF. We show your deadline, your form, and whether your county lets you submit the informal review online. In much of the country that first round is an upload, decided on the documents. If it settles there, you never stand in front of a board at all.
A value conclusion, not a complaint
The deck ends with a specific number and the reconciliation behind it. Boards grant reductions to people who tell them exactly what to write down.
Your photographs stay put
The deck is assembled entirely in your browser. Photographs of your attic and your plumbing are never uploaded anywhere.
Two honest things.
Both of these come up for nearly everyone who does this, and it’s easier if you know about them going in.
You will spend an hour cataloguing what’s wrong with a house you like
This is the part that catches people off guard. You take pride in your home, and the appeal asks you to photograph the crawlspace, the shimmed rafters and the small 1950s bathroom, and then to argue in writing that the street noise is bad.
That isn’t disloyalty and it isn’t running your house down. The assessor is not asking whether you love it. They are asking what a stranger would pay for original wiring and a lot nobody can build on — and for about forty minutes, answering that honestly is worth real money. You can go back to being proud of it the moment you file.
A good appeal takes work, and nothing automated will get you there
You can buy a generated evidence packet for fifty dollars. It is four comparable sales and a cover letter. A board sees a dozen of those in a morning and grants the smallest adjustment that makes the room move on.
What actually moves a number is the specific stuff: the contractor’s bid on letterhead, the third front setback nobody noticed, the four sales you read and threw back before you found the right ones. We do the arithmetic, the adjustments and the deadlines. The observations have to be yours — that is not a shortcoming of the tool, it is the reason the tool works.
Reasonable questions, answered straight.
Can they raise my assessment because I complained?
This is the fear that stops most people, so it deserves a real answer rather than a reassuring one. In most places the review is about the value you put in front of them and an increase is uncommon — but a few jurisdictions do permit one, and we are not going to tell you it is impossible. It is a normal question to ask your assessor’s office before you file, and they will answer it.
Do I need a lawyer or an appraiser?
For a residential appeal, almost never. Every state lets an owner represent themselves, which is precisely why this product can exist. If your case turns into a formal court proceeding that is a different matter — but that is not where these start, and it is not where most of them end.
Why not just use a firm that takes a cut?
Sometimes you should — if you would genuinely never do the work, a quarter of something beats all of nothing. But understand the trade. At 35% of the example above they take $2,135 every year they file, against $149 here, once. The reason they can charge that is that they are doing the part you are perfectly capable of doing.
Isn’t there a site that will just do all of this for me?
Plenty of them say so, and we would treat the promise carefully. Nobody can photograph your crawlspace from a data centre, and the arguments that actually move an assessor are the ones only you can see. What can be automated — the adjustment grid, the uniformity study, the deadlines, the forms — we have automated. The rest is forty minutes of your attention, and it is the part that works.
Is this a subscription?
No. $149 plus tax, one time, for one property. No renewal, no card kept on file, no annual charge, nothing to cancel. If your assessment isn’t reduced we refund the whole thing.
What if my house really is worth what they say?
Then you will find that out in the first ten minutes, for free, and you should not file. The builder runs the comparable sales and the uniformity check before you are asked to pay anything. Finding out you have no case is a perfectly good outcome, and it costs you nothing here.
One flat fee, paid once. No cut of your savings.
A contingency firm at 35% takes $2,135 of that first-year saving — every year they file. This is a one-time charge for one property, and it is refunded in full if your assessment isn’t reduced.
- Build all 12 exhibits
- Live value calculator
- Your filing deadline
- Preview only — no export
- Everything in Draft
- Editable .pptx + print-ready PDF
- Filing deadline, form and body
- Hearing script and objection prep
- Refunded if your assessment isn’t reduced
One-time charge for one property. Not a subscription — there is nothing to cancel.
- Multiple parcels
- Re-file each year in one click
- Automated record and comparable lookup