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Home & Mortgage

How to Appeal Your Property Tax Assessment — Plus Senior Freezes and Exemptions by State

Aerial view of a residential neighborhood, with a sticky note reading “Over-assessed?”.
Photo by Paul Hanaoka on Unsplash

The number on your assessment notice isn't a fact about your house. It's an estimate, often from a computer model that has never seen your kitchen, your old roof or the crack across the basement floor. You're allowed to argue with it, and very few people do. The same bill raises a second question, too: are you getting every reduction you qualify for? Many of those only start once you apply.

See the appeal steps and deadlines

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By Ray Castellano · Updated Sep 29, 2026 · Reviewed against Texas Comptroller, Illinois Department of Revenue, New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, New Jersey Division of Taxation, Florida Department of Revenue, California State Board of Equalization, ATTOM, National Taxpayers Union Foundation

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Assessors value thousands of homes at once, working from recent sales, square footage, lot size and age. On average that works. On a single house it can miss by a mile: a record that counts the garage as living space, a tired roof nobody saw from the curb, comparable sales from three streets over.

For homeowners 65 and older, the bigger money is often in the breaks: an extra exemption, a freeze, a credit or a deferral. Those go to a different office than an appeal, on different forms, with different deadlines. People who handle one often forget the other, and some programs want a new application every year.

Check for missing exemptions first

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Before you argue with the county's number

Starting an appeal is usually free or close to it. A few minutes of checking first tells you whether you have a case, and keeps you away from arguments that boards don't accept.

  1. Would it sell for that? Find the market value the county has on file. If a realistic price for your house today is clearly lower, you may have a case.
  2. What a lower value is worth to you. Divide last year's total bill by the market value on last year's notice. That's roughly your effective rate, and it shows what a reduction would actually save.
  3. Closed sales, not asking prices. Boards look at homes that actually sold. Asking prices and online estimates won't carry much weight.
  4. Value, not the bill. Arguing that your taxes went up too much doesn't work. The board rules on what the house is worth, not on the size of the bill.
  5. A review can cut both ways. In some places it can push your value up. If there's an unpermitted addition or the record undercounts your square footage, think before you open the file.

If the numbers point to a case, the article walks through the appeal step by step, the deadlines that trip people up, and how six big states handle senior breaks.

See the senior breaks in six states

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