Jul 30, 2002 By Paul Sunyak 3 min read

With two days left before Wednesday’s deadline to file an assessment appeal, Joe Curious, a typical Fayette County property owner, wants to see if he has grounds for an appeal. He thinks the $36,400 assessment on his property in Edenborn, German Township, is a little high. Cole Layer Trumble, the firm that conducted the first countywide reassessment in 44 years, has given his .23-acre lot a $7,380 value and his 1,644-square-foot house built in 1930 a $29,020 value.

But Joe doesn’t think houses in Edenborn are worth that kind of money. So what does he need to do?

Joe logs on to the county’s Web site at He clicks on “click here to search property records.” That takes him to a second page, where he scrolls down to the bottom and clicks on “search for tax records.”

That gives him a third screen, where he clicks “agree” at the bottom. On the fourth page, he clicks clicks on the words “sales criteria” at the top, far-right corner of the screen.

There, he punches in all the pertinent criteria, starting with either his neighborhood number or German Township, since German Township is one of 26 municipalities in the county that CLT treated as a single residential neighborhood.

That means that Joe can use sales data from properties similar to his in the entire township as the basis for arguing for a lower tax assessment. In another 10 of the county’s 42 municipalities, CLT created only two residential neighborhoods, giving many property owners wide latitude to use comparable sales.

For example, Joe wouldn’t be limited to using property sales in Edenborn. He could use sales in Palmer, Leckrone, Adah, McClellandtown, Gates or anywhere in German Township if he wanted.

At his computer keyboard, Joe then inputs the rest of the numbers needed to conduct his search: A sales amount of between $0 and $40,000, a sale date of within the past five years, a square footage of between 1,500 and 2,000, the “old style” building designation that CLT gave his house, the fact that it has two stories, and a “year built” range from 1900 to 1950.

His search yields a list of 24 properties that fall within the range of the sales criteria he has specified. While he can use any of them as “comparables” at his appeal hearing, he takes special notice of three recent sales that occurred in Edenborn.

All of them are not only within German Township, but they are also in the same patch town as his property. One sold for $15,000 in November 1998, another sold for $18,300 in November 2000 and the third sold for $17,150 in September 2001.

The highest of those three sales is roughly one-half of Joe’s new $36,400 assessment. He now thinks he has a solid case to appeal.

Joe writes down those three properties’ parcel identification numbers and checks them out on the county’s Web site. After concluding that these houses are very similar in terms of condition and market value, Joe takes the extra step of printing out photographs of them as well as a photograph of his own house, all of which are available on the county’s Web site.

Joe plans to introduce that photographic evidence at his appeal hearing, along with his list of three recent sale prices on comparable properties that he believes justify lowering his tax assessment.