explore the assessment process
We highly encourage you to review the videos, links, and educational materials shared here. As a property owner, understanding how assessments work is crucial for making informed decisions about your property. Being well-informed empowers you to navigate the assessment process with confidence, ensuring that your property is accurately evaluated.
By taking an active role in learning about assessments, you not only protect your investment but also contribute to the fair and equitable functioning of the assessment process, benefiting your entire community
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what are my rights as a property owner?
You have the right to contest your assessed value. After you receive your notice of value change you can submit your review form and evidence before or during the open book process. An assessor will review your documentation. If there is sufficient evidence provided, the assessor may determine a value adjustment.
You have the right to feel safe before, during and after an interior/exterior inspection. Accurate will send you a notice many weeks in advance via mail before the assessor arrives at your property. All of our vehicles are clearly marked and our assessors will have a company photo ID to verify they work for Accurate. If you are concerned you can contact us or the municipality at any time.
You have the right to refuse an interior/exterior inspection of your property. To do so you must contact the assessors office to confirm your “refusal of inspection.” We will need to know your parcel and address information to verify you are the owner.
You have the right to appeal your assessment if you cannot come to an agreement of value with the assessor. The Board of Review is a court-like setting for you to share your evidence with municipal officials of which will make the final determination of value. You must file with the municipal clerk only after meeting with an assessor and no later than 48 hours before the board of review meeting.
assessment Tools for Property Owners
assessment Tools for municipalities
Frequently Asked Questions
As the assessor, we do not determine taxes, this is done by the budget needs of the schools, city, county, technical college and state, these budgets are set in November of each year after all budget needs are collected. Click here to learn everything you’ll ever need to know about Wisconsin property taxes.
Send in any documentation you would like for us to take into consideration, (Recent Comparable Sales, Listings, a recent private appraisal). We will flag your parcel for review once the information is received. When the info is reviewed in comparison to the assessment information and value (Typically May/June later if it is a Revaluation year) you will be sent a determination notice in the mail. This notice will include your current value along with open book dates if you should still have further questions.
We are contracted to walk through each year verifying the data we have on file is correct and up to date. You may have taken out a permit recently, or your community requires a more regularly scheduled inspection process to verify the data is up to date.
Any time we change your value it is required by law that we send out a value change notice to the owner indicating their value has changed from the previous year.
In a Maintenance Year you may have remodeled your property, added a deck/patio, basement finishing, addition or etc. During an Interim Market Update or an Annual Interim Market Update the entire municipality is reviewed and all values are brought to current market value based on recent arms-length comparable property sales in the area. Permits are also taken into consideration and the value added if enhancements were made.
Annual Interim Market Updates are performed every year in your community. The entire municipality is reviewed and all values brought to current market value as of January 1 st. Your annual value is based on recent arms-length comparable property sales in the area. The real estate market changes every year; we are adjusting the assessed values to keep up with the market. Permits are also taken into consideration and the value added if enhancements were made to your property before January 1 each year.
Assessed value is an estimate of market value assigned to your property based on the last interim market update year. Fair Market Value is the States estimate of what your current property value is. If your fair market value is significantly higher than your assessed value it may be that your property has not been re-assessed in quite some time, or that the market is more volatile.
Sales questionnaires are sent to all properties that sold, these questions help us as the assessor determine if the sale is valid as well as help us verify current property information or attributes of the sale.
January 1 st – All properties are assessed as it existed on this date. (If new construction and it was not complete as of January 1 st , a partial assessment will be applied for that year). March 1 st is the last day to file Personal Property Returns with the assessor After the assessor has reviewed all assessment work for the year, value change notices are sent to those properties that had a value change. Open Book is held after the value change notices have been sent in the event a property owner has any questions. Beginning the 2nd Monday in May board of reviews begin and in some cases can be as late as October or November. To attend the board of review an intent to appear before the board of review must be filed with the municipal clerk no later than 48 hours prior to the meeting.
The assessor has no input on the budget decisions. Though the value of your property affects your share of taxes, the actual amount you pay is determined by the budget needs of the schools, city, county, technical college, and state. All of these taxing units decide what services they will provide in the coming year and how much money they will need to provide those services. This decision is made mid to end of November each year. Typically these taxing units budget’s will increase on a yearly basis.
When the review of the supplied documentation is complete, typically May through October if it is an interim market update year, you will be sent a determination notice in the mail. This notice will include your current value along with open book dates if you should still have further questions.
Split/Combinations are done at the County level; the property owner will need to contact the property listing department at the appropriate county to find out what their specific process is.
