Wake County reassesses property tax values of all area homes every four years. The next reassessment will occur on January 1, 2020, meaning that’s the day where the tax value on your properties may change. There are two likely outcomes of this reassessment: Your taxes will either go up or down.

Most of the time, when your taxes are lowered, that’s a great outcome. However, if your property is valued to be higher than its market value (meaning you’ll pay more in taxes), there is a process by which you can appeal the assessment.

Appealing your new property taxes involves a three-stage process:

1. You can file an informal appeal. This is a phone call you’ll make to the Wake County Tax Administration (919-856-5400). They’ll ask you to fill out a form and then they’ll send out a county appraiser to come take a second look at your property to determine whether they agree with your appeal. If you don’t get a favorable result, you’ll move on to the next stage:

“The next reassessment will occur on January 1, 2020, meaning that’s the day where the tax value on your properties may change.”

2. You can file an appeal to the Board of Equalization and Review. You can do this online through the tax portal at www.Wakegov.com. Once you go through that process and you still didn’t get a favorable outcome, there’s a third option:

3. You can file an appeal with the state. When you get here, you’ll find that it functions more like a court trial. You’ll file an appeal to the North Carolina Property Tax Commission, and the case will be heard by the North Carolina Court of Appeals, where the burden will be on you to present your case in court. Most of the time when it gets that far, you’re probably not going to win since you’ve both had the county appraiser come take a second look and you’ve filed a second appeal to the Board of Equalization and Review. Though the chances of getting the assessment corrected at this stage are low, it’s still an option to pursue.

Hopefully this added some clarity to the topic of property tax reassessment. These reassessments aren’t usually too off-base, but eight years ago when the market changed drastically, there were a lot of cases where real estate owners were paying far too much in tax revenues.

If you have any questions about this or other real estate topics, don’t hesitate to reach out to me. I’m happy to help you.