Shelby
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Is your assessment too high?

An assessment is somebody's opinion of what your property is worth. Like any opinion it can be wrong — and when it is wrong upward, you pay for it every year until somebody corrects it.

Check yours against what sold nearby

Pick your parcel and we will put its assessed value beside the assessed values and recorded prices of the homes that sold around it in the last three years — the county's own record, read for you. Not an appraisal; the place an appeal starts.

Shelby, Moultrie and Effingham counties. Nothing to sign up for; the review is the county’s own record, read for you.

When an assessment drifts

Assessments are made in bulk, from records, without anybody walking through the house. They go wrong in fairly predictable ways: a property that has not changed hands in many years, a house whose condition no longer matches what the record says, a building recorded at the wrong size, or an outbuilding that came down years ago and is still on the card.

The one people notice is a recent sale nearby. A neighbour selling high can pull a whole street's assessments up, whether or not those houses are worth what that one was.

What actually wins an appeal

The county Board of Review decides, and what it responds to is evidence of market value — comparable sales, and a defensible opinion of what the property would bring. Not that the bill went up, and not what the neighbours pay.

That evidence is what an appraisal is for. But most assessments are roughly right, and there is no sense paying for one to discover that. So ask us first: we will look at what has sold near you and tell you honestly whether the numbers look worth appealing at all.

Ask us to look at it

Tell us the property and what the assessment says. No cost, and no obligation to do anything about the answer.

No obligation, and we will not pass your details to anyone else.

Who to ask, by county

Appeal windows open for a limited period after assessments are published, and each county sets its own. We publish the dates we have verified — the payment due dates below — and deliberately do not publish appeal deadlines we have not. Your county is the authority on those.