The approach used
Cost, sales comparison, or income. Which one the assessor applied, and whether it is the right one for this property.
Commercial, industrial, and income-producing
Your assessment is an argument. We check whether it holds.
Office, retail, flex, manufacturing, multi-family, hospitality, self-storage. If it earns, it is assessed on assumptions — and assumptions can be tested against evidence.
Check my assessmentWhat we examine
The inputs
Rent and vacancy assumptions, capitalisation rate, depreciation, and the comparables selected. Every one of them is a number somebody chose.
The classification
Property classified into the wrong category is assessed by the wrong method. It happens, and it is checkable.
The part most people are never told
A lower assessment does not automatically lower your bill
Michigan calculates your property tax on Taxable Value, not on Assessed Value. They are two different numbers on the same notice, and for most property that has not changed hands recently, Taxable Value is the lower of the two. It is capped, and it rises slowly.
After a successful appeal, your Taxable Value becomes whichever is lower: what it already was, or your new Assessed Value. So winning a reduction in Assessed Value only reaches this year's bill if the value we can justify falls below your current Taxable Value.
If it does not, the appeal is real and the saving is zero. That is not a fine-print exception. It is the ordinary case for a property somebody has owned for a while.
What we check before we encourage anybody
The assessment we can support must be lower than your current Taxable Value.
If that is not true for your parcel, we tell you there are no first-year savings. We do not put you into a follow-up sequence and we do not show you a hypothetical.
Fees
A share of what you save, and nothing if you save nothing
Commercial, industrial, mixed use
Contingency on first-year savings
- Standard
- 33% of first-year savings
- Signed within 10 days of our written offer
- 30% of first-year savings
- Three or more parcels
- 25% of first-year savings
The 10-day window runs from the timestamp on the engagement offer we send you. We do not restart it, and it is not a countdown on a page.
Residential
$199 flat, win only
- $199 flat fee, charged only if we obtain a reduction.
- No fee at all if we do not.
- We take residential cases where the projected first-year saving is at least $700. Below that, the appeal is not worth your money and we will say so.
Every engagement runs 3 assessment years, with an annual review and refiling. There is no upfront fee on either schedule, and no outcome is guaranteed.
Straight answers
Commercial questions
What do you need for an income-producing property?
The assessment record is the starting point, and we pull that ourselves. To argue value on income we need the rent roll and the operating figures for the property.
We ask for those after we have looked at the assessment and decided the case is worth building. We do not collect financials from people we are not going to help.
The building has real vacancy. Does that matter?
It can matter a great deal. An assessment built on the assumption that space is let, when it is not, rests on a figure that can be shown to be wrong.
Whether it changes your bill is a separate question, and it comes down to Taxable Value.
We own several parcels. Is that one engagement?
Three or more parcels are priced together at the portfolio rate and handled as one engagement, with one point of contact.
We still assess each parcel on its own evidence. A portfolio price is not a portfolio shortcut.
How much of our time does this take?
The initial review takes none of it beyond the address.
If we build a case, we will ask for specific documents once, and we handle the filing and the appearance.
Send us the address
We will confirm the parcel, read the assessment record, and reply with what we found. Free, and there is no obligation to go any further.
Check my assessment