Tax Appeal Appraisals in Georgia: When One Helps and What It Must Show

A Georgia property owner can appeal an assessment without an appraisal. The question worth asking is when an independent appraisal changes the outcome, when Georgia law requires one, and what the report has to show so the board, the arbitrator, or the county's own staff has to take it seriously.

If you need the filing steps themselves, start with how to appeal your property tax assessment in Georgia, step by step. This post is about the evidence.

Key Takeaways

• Arbitration requires one. If you choose arbitration, Georgia law requires you to deliver a certified appraisal to the board of tax assessors within 45 days of the county's acknowledgment of your appeal.
• The county must consider one. In any appeal, you may submit a certified appraisal, and the board of tax assessors must consider it on request and answer within 45 days.
• The effective date is January 1. The report must value the property as of January 1 of the tax year under appeal.
• It must answer the county's evidence. That includes distressed and bank-owned sales, which Georgia law directs assessors to consider.
• PT-311A is not an appraisal. It is the appeal form. The appraisal is a separate report you attach or submit.
• It is not always worth it. A small gap between the county's value and the market's rarely justifies the cost.

When Georgia law requires an appraisal: arbitration

Georgia offers several routes for an appeal, and one of them is built around an appraisal. Under O.C.G.A. 48-5-311(f), an owner who elects arbitration must provide the board of tax assessors with a certified appraisal within 45 days after the county acknowledges the appeal. Without it, the appeal ends, unless within that same 45 days you elect to send it to the board of equalization instead.

The statute defines a certified appraisal as one given, signed, and certified by a real property appraiser classified by the Georgia Real Estate Commission and the Georgia Real Estate Appraisers Board.

What happens next gives the appraisal real leverage:

• The county has 45 days to act on it. If the board of tax assessors accepts your appraisal, that value becomes final.
• A rejection has to be formal. The county must send written notice of rejection by certified mail within ten days of rejecting it. If you are not notified within that period, your appraisal value becomes final.
• Silence counts. If the county neither accepts nor rejects the appraisal within 45 days of receiving it, the appraisal becomes the final value.
• If it is rejected, an arbitrator decides. The arbitrator must be a state certified general or state certified residential real property appraiser with experience in the type of property involved, and the county still carries the burden of proving its value by a preponderance of the evidence.

Arbitration has a cost that runs both ways. You pay for your own appraisal. And whichever side's value lands further from the arbitrator's value pays the arbitrator's fees and costs. That rule rewards an honest, supportable number and punishes an inflated one.

When an appraisal helps in any appeal

Even outside arbitration, O.C.G.A. 48-5-311(e)(1)(B.1) lets you submit a certified appraisal in support of your appeal. The board of tax assessors must consider it on request, and within 45 days of receiving it must tell you it accepts the appraisal or give you its reasons for rejecting it. The same provision limits how old the appraisal can be relative to the assessment date, so a report prepared years ago for another purpose may not qualify. Ask me about timing before you rely on an existing report.

An appraisal tends to earn its cost in four situations:

1. The gap is large enough to matter. The Georgia property tax appeal calculator turns the gap into annual tax so you can compare it with the cost of proof.
2. Your property is unusual. Acreage, a significant condition problem, an odd floor plan, or a location issue that mass appraisal averages away.
3. The sales are hard to read. When the nearby sales range widely, someone has to explain which ones actually compare to your property and why.
4. You want the two-year hold to stick. Under O.C.G.A. 48-5-299(c), a reduced value is generally held for the next two years, but not if you neither attended the hearing nor gave the board written evidence of your opinion of value. A written appraisal is written evidence.

When the county's number turns out to be reasonable, the appraisal still gives you an answer before you spend a day at a hearing.

What the appraisal must show

A tax appeal report is read by people whose job is to find its weak points: county appraisal staff, board of equalization members, and, in arbitration, another certified appraiser. It holds up when it does these things.

The right date: January 1 of the tax year

The Georgia Department of Revenue states that counties must establish value as of January 1 of each year. A report that analyzes today's market answers a question the board is not asking. The analysis should rest on the market as it stood on January 1 of the year under appeal.

The legal definition of value

O.C.G.A. 48-5-2 defines fair market value as the amount a knowledgeable buyer would pay and a willing seller would accept in an arm's length, bona fide sale. The report should state that it is developing that value, for that purpose, as of that date.

The facts of the property, proven

At the board of equalization, the county's findings about the physical characteristics of your property are presumed correct. If the county has the wrong square footage, the wrong bath count, or no record of a condition problem, the appraisal should document the actual facts with measurements and photographs, so the correction is proven rather than asserted.

Every factor the county is required to weigh

O.C.G.A. 48-5-2 lists criteria assessors must apply to real property, including existing zoning, existing use and legal restrictions on use, and deed covenants. It also directs them to consider bank sales, other financial institution owned sales, and distressed sales of comparable property. A report that quietly leaves out a nearby foreclosure sale invites the county to raise it. A credible report addresses those sales and explains how they compare.

For income-producing property, the same statute says the income approach shall be considered if the data are available.

Support a reader can follow

The comparable sales, the adjustments, and the reasoning behind each adjustment should be laid out so a skeptical reader can trace the conclusion back to the evidence. That is what lets the appraisal meet the county's evidence on value rather than simply disagree with it.

PT-311A is the appeal, not the appraisal

Form PT-311A, the state's uniform appeal form, records your grounds, your own value assertion, and your choice of how the appeal will be heard. It does not set any requirements for an appraisal and it is not an appraisal. If you order a tax appeal appraisal, it is a separate report, and the value on your PT-311A should be one the report supports.

When I would tell you not to order one

If the difference between the county's value and the market's is small, the tax at stake may not cover the report. If the whole problem is a factual error, such as a bath the house does not have, the fix may be a conversation with the assessors' office and a few photographs. In either case, I would rather say so up front.

When an appraisal does make sense, my property tax appeal appraisal service page explains how I scope the assignment, including the January 1 effective date.

Judging the report, and the person who signs it

Two appraisals of the same house can be entirely different kinds of document. One is a form: the boxes filled, a grid of sales, a figure at the bottom the reader is asked to accept. The other is a narrative report that makes its own case, naming the sales relied on, the adjustment applied to each, and the market evidence behind that adjustment. County appraisal staff read the first kind in a minute and set it aside. An arbitrator, who is a certified appraiser too, goes looking for the reasoning, and if none of it is on the page there is nothing to weigh against the county's number. Ask which one you would be getting before you order.

The person signing it matters as much as the format. One short set of questions works on anyone, me included:

• How many appeal assignments have you done, and in which counties?
• Have you ever been deposed or testified about an opinion of value?
• Will you perform the inspection yourself?
• What effective date will the report carry, and why?
• Does your fee turn in any way on the result? The answer should be an immediate no.

My own answers come out of a career spent mostly on the reviewing side: in the field since 1997, Chief Review Appraiser at two national appraisal management companies where contested values were mine to resolve, a wholesale appraisal desk I built and ran at 1,700 orders a year, appraisal management operations, FHA field audits, litigation. Taking other people's reports apart was the job for years, and it is the habit I write my own with. I also go through the property with the owner, so what reaches the report is not a guess about what I was standing in front of.

FAQs: Appraisals for Georgia Tax Appeals

Does the appraisal have to be done by a Georgia certified appraiser?

For arbitration and for the appraisal provision in O.C.G.A. 48-5-311(e)(1)(B.1), the statute calls for an appraisal given, signed, and certified by a real property appraiser classified by the Georgia Real Estate Commission and the Georgia Real Estate Appraisers Board.

Can I use the appraisal from when I bought the house?

Possibly, but check two things first: whether its effective date is close enough to January 1 of the tax year to speak to that date, and whether it falls within the statute's time limit for appraisals submitted in an appeal.

Will the county just accept my appraisal?

It may, and in arbitration, a county that does not reject it in time is bound by it. But the county is entitled to disagree. What a report can do is make the county's disagreement rest on evidence rather than assertion.

What does the appraisal cost compared with the savings?

That depends on the property and the gap. The tax appeal calculator lets you enter a cost and see the break-even before you decide.