## What You Are Actually Appealing Your assessed value of $412,000 — not your tax bill. The rate is set by local budgets and levies and no appeal touches it. What you can challenge is the valuation, and here you have two independent arguments, one of which is unusually clean. ## The Dollar Stake — Work This Out First Your notice does not show a rate, so derive your own: take last year's total tax bill and divide it by last year's assessed value of $296,000. That gives your effective rate. Then multiply that rate by the reduction you are seeking. Purely to show the shape of it — if your effective rate were around 1.5%, a reduction from $412,000 to roughly $325,000 is $87,000 of value, or about $1,305 a year. Run it with your real rate before deciding anything. That is worth a weekend. It is also worth more than one year, because a corrected value usually carries forward until the next reassessment. ## Start Here: The Record Card Error **Your record card says 2,400 finished square feet. The house has 2,050.** That is your strongest single item and it should lead everything. It is objective. It does not ask anyone to accept an opinion about value — it asks them to correct a measurement. And it is 350 square feet of *finished* space that does not exist, because the previous owner's basement permit was never completed. Assessors typically value finished and unfinished space very differently, so this is not a rounding difference. Do this: request your property record card from the assessor, confirm what it claims, then document reality — photographs of the unfinished basement, and an independent measurement if you can get one. If a permit was pulled and never finalized, the permit record itself supports you. ## The Overvaluation Case Your three sales are the right kind of evidence: closed, arm's-length, same street, similar 1960s split-levels, and last autumn is near your January 1 valuation date. - $318,000 - $327,000 - $335,000 — adjust this one **downward**; it has an updated kitchen yours does not, so it sets a ceiling you cannot reach That clusters your indicated value in the low-to-mid $320,000s against an assessment of $412,000. Say the adjustment out loud in your filing rather than hiding it — a board trusts an owner who volunteers the weakness in their own comparable. **Leave your 2019 purchase price out.** At $255,000 it is six years from the valuation date and proves nothing about January 1 of this year. If asked, answer honestly; do not lead with it. ## Ask About The Increase Itself A 39% jump in one year is worth one direct question to the assessor: what caused it? A cyclical reassessment, a class change, and a permit-triggered revaluation are three different answers, and the third one may be the very basement permit that is also wrong on your card. Ask before you file. ## Evidence Packet, In Reading Order 1. One-paragraph statement of position 2. Property record card with the square footage circled 3. Photographs of the unfinished basement, plus permit history 4. The three comparable sales with dates, prices, and your kitchen adjustment noted 5. Your independent measurement, if obtained **Statement of position:** "The assessment reflects 2,400 finished square feet. The property contains 2,050; the basement is unfinished, as the enclosed photographs and permit record show. Three arm's-length sales of comparable homes on the same street in the months surrounding the valuation date ranged from $318,000 to $335,000, with the highest reflecting a kitchen renovation this property does not have. I respectfully request the assessment be corrected accordingly." ## Odds And Next Step **Strong.** The measurement error alone is usually enough to force a correction, and the sales independently support a lower figure. Two questions for the assessor's office today, before you file: 1. Is an **informal review** available before a formal appeal? It is often faster and free, and a factual error like yours is exactly what informal review exists to fix. 2. Can an assessed value be **increased** as a result of an appeal in this jurisdiction? Ask it even though your case is strong. And the one thing that cannot be recovered: **find the filing deadline on your notice today.** Deadlines here are short, keyed to the notice date, and absolute — I cannot tell you what yours is, and no strength of case survives missing it.