What Affects Your Assessed Value

What Affects Your Assessed Value gives you a clear, step-by-step way to understand what drives your bill, what to verify on your notice, and what to do if the numbers look off.

- Local Laws: Some states reassess only on sale or every 2–5 years. Others reassess annually. Check your state’s rules.

• Improvement & Sale: Major home improvements (like additions) or selling your property usually

trigger a reassessment to current market value.

• Caps & Adjustments: Some homeowners (seniors, veterans) have freezes or deferrals that keep

assessed value low. If you no longer qualify (e.g., you turn 65 or move), your assessment may jump. If you’re curious, you can often look up your property’s assessed value on your county assessor’s website. Compare that to online home price estimates (Zillow, etc.). If your assessed value is unusually high relative to comparable sales, you may have grounds to appeal. Example: A $400,000 market-value home in New Jersey might have a 2.23% effective tax rate (about $8,920 a year 4 ), while an otherwise identical home in Hawaii at the same market price would pay only about $1,040 (0.26%). Even if their assessed values were both 100% of market, drastically different mill rates cause the gap in taxes.

3 Key Point: Always remember that your property tax is based on assessed value, not the dollar amount you think you could sell your home for. When comparing taxes or appealing, focus on the assessed number. Staying Informed: Tax authorities don’t usually send reminders about exemptions or rebates. It’s up to you to research any discounts (see our Exemptions guide). If in doubt about your home’s assessed value, ProptaxHelper offers resources to compare it against market data and to appeal if necessary.

Next steps

• Use the Property Tax Estimator to sanity-check your bill.
• If something looks off, run a quick Appeal Savings scenario.
• Scan the Articles list for related topics like exemptions, deadlines, and escrow planning.