How to read your property tax assessment

An assessment notice shows a value for your home that is often not its price. The assessment is the starting point for your property tax. The tax is the assessment, less any exemptions, times the tax rate.

What the tax pays for

Property taxes fund schools, fire and police protection, streets, libraries and other local services. Each property pays in proportion to what it's worth, so the assessed value sets your share, and it matters that the value is accurate.

Market value

The assessor, a local official, estimates the market value of your property, meaning what it would sell for under normal conditions. For a home, the assessor generally compares it with similar homes that sold recently, adjusting for the ways they differ.

Assessed value

An assessment can be a legally set fraction of market value rather than the full value. The assessor estimates the market value, then multiplies it by that factor. At 100 percent, the assessment is the market value. At 30 percent, a home worth $100,000 is assessed at $30,000.

How the tax rate is set

The assessor doesn't set your tax. Each taxing body, such as a school district, adopts a budget. The tax levy is the total it plans to raise through property tax. Where the budget drives the tax, the rate is the levy divided by the total taxable assessed value.

A higher assessment doesn't automatically mean a higher bill. Where the budget drives the tax, higher values push the rate down, and the total tax rises only when the budgets do. If your assessment rose 3 percent and most others rose 5 percent, your share of the levy falls.

Check the record

The assessment rests on what the assessor's office has recorded about the home. The office keeps a property record card, usually with a sketch or photo of the building, its location and the main things that affect its value. Ask to see it, and check the size, the rooms and anything you've added or removed.

An annotated example

What to do next

Ask the assessor's office for the record of your home and check it against the house. Save your 2026 notice in the house file, and keep each year's notice so the next one can be read beside it.