Local Assessors Seek Federal Help to Make Property Taxes Fairer
Municipal officials want information from Fannie and Freddie’s appraisal database.
Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi in Chicago, on Dec. 15.
Photographer: Christopher Dilts/BloombergA group of municipal property-valuation officials from across the U.S. has asked President Joe Biden’s administration for help in tapping national data about the condition and quality of millions of homes to address widespread unfairness in local property taxes.
The effort follows a series of Bloomberg News reports this year about how residential property taxes, which raise roughly $500 billion a year nationwide, are plagued by systemic flaws: Official assessments tend to overstate the taxable value of inexpensive homes while understating the value of expensive ones. As a result, working-class homeowners pay higher effective property tax rates than the wealthy do.