The goal of the assessment equity project is to determine the fair market value of every property in Wayne County. If you purchased your house within the past year and if the purchase was on the open market and had no unusual conditions, the assessed value on your notice should be reasonably close to the sale price, but probably will not be the exact amount. Just because one person is willing to pay a certain amount for a property doesn’t mean that the majority of buyers would be willing to pay the same price. During the valuation process, each property is compared to up to five similar properties to determine the most probable selling price. While sale prices may vary slightly, even for identical properties, the assessor must be equitable in their valuations. Therefore, similar properties should have the same assessed value, even if they might have differing sale prices, with adjustments made to account for differences between property characteristics.
Along the same lines, even if you appealed your value (assessment) in a prior year to the Assessor’s Office, or to the Board of Assessment Appeals, and the value was adjusted, the revaluation appraises each property as if it had not been valued before. Any prior changes are not considered since those changes were based on the 2004 countywide reassessment. The new value you receive should be a reasonable estimate of market value and equitable with surrounding properties of a similar type.