We got answers to your questions about the 2023 Jackson County property valuation process

It’s property assessment season in Jackson County, and many homeowners are alarmed and frustrated about stark increases to their valuations.

The Star has heard from readers wondering about the process of contesting these valuations, so we reached out to county assessors for answers.

Jackson County introduced a new “informal” review process this year, which assessors touted as a way to “help property owners resolve their concerns more quickly.” But this process is proving difficult to access, and the July 10 deadline to file an appeal with the county is approaching. If homeowners miss this deadline, they won’t be able to contest the county’s estimate of their homes’ value.

The Star brought your questions directly to Gail McCann Beatty, the director of the county’s assessment department. Here’s what she said.

A reader asked: (I’ve heard) the county cannot raise your house taxes more than 15% at a time, per Missouri law. But I have also heard that law excludes the cities of Kansas City and St. Louis. Can you tell me which version is true?

Actually, neither of these are true, Beatty told The Star. County assessors can increase property values in Missouri by as much as they deem appropriate — there’s no legal limit on these increases.

Valuation increases don’t automatically mean that your property taxes will increase — your local taxing jurisdictions (cities, school districts, etc.) still have to set their tax rates once property values have been finalized.

If a home valuation rises by more than 15%, the county has to perform a “physical inspection” of your home from the outside — something Beatty says the department has already done for all homes in the county. Homeowners also have the option of scheduling an interior inspection of their home as part of the appeal process. This rule used to only apply in St. Louis, but it was recently expanded to cover the whole state.

Interior inspections are optional, and the county does not have to automatically perform them on all homes with an increase of 15% or above — it just has to give homeowners the option of requesting one.

According to state law, “The owner shall have no less than thirty days to notify the assessor of a request for an interior physical inspection.” The current deadline to apply for one is July 10, but if you received your valuation notice after June 10, state law says you should have at least 30 days to make the request.

You can request an inspection when you file an appeal through the assessment office’s website.

Reader Deanna asks: Can you help me find out how to get an appointment for a meeting at 1300 Washington?

Homeowners can make an appointment for an informal valuation review at the county’s assessment office at 1300 Washington St. when they file an appeal online through the department’s website. The deadline to file this appeal is July 10.

“When you go in and you file your appeal, when you get to the end, there is a button that you push to schedule the informal review,” Beatty said.

You read that right: Jackson County is requiring residents to submit an official appeal before they are able to schedule an informal review meeting, even though the county added the informal review step this year in order to “reduce the need for an appeal.” Here are three things to consider including in your appeal.

If you reach an agreement on your home’s value during this informal meeting, you can then close your appeal and opt out of the next step of the process, which is a formal hearing.

Beatty said the reason for this appointment system is that the county may not be able to provide an informal review for every resident who requests one.

“We want to make sure that we are protecting everyone’s appeal rights,” Beatty said. “So by requiring them to file the appeal to get the informal (meeting), it ensures that if for whatever reason, we can’t get through all the informals, that they have not missed out on their opportunity to file an appeal.”

If you’d prefer to not file an official appeal before having an informal review meeting, you have the option of walking in at 1300 Washington St. — but Beatty said that wait times for walk-in clients are significant, and people may get turned away.

“They will likely be here most of the day,” Beatty said. “We may stop the number of people that are coming in so that we don’t have someone that sits here literally all day and then can’t get seen.”

The 1300 Washington St. office location is open from 8 a.m. until 4 p.m., Monday through Friday.

Reader Mick asked: If you have a new appraisal done and it comes in higher than the county’s number, does that get reported to the county?

If you hire an outside appraiser to calculate the value of your home, this number will not be reported to the county unless you or your appraiser chooses to report it.

You can bring an appraisal document with you to your informal review meeting or submit it as part of your appeal as proof of your home’s correct value.

If a county inspector comes to your home, they may land on a value higher than the county’s calculated number. If you continue to appeal your valuation after that, the county’s Board of Equalizations will have access to the appraisal and may choose to increase the valuation of your home, Beatty said.

If you don’t want to risk this happening, your other option is to drop your appeal and agree to the county’s original estimate.

Mick also asked: Would an appraisal tied to the home purchased in January 2021 be useful toward appealing if I should choose to do so?

In general, the county prefers to see appraisal documents that are less than a year old, Beatty told The Star. For a 2021 appraisal, she said assessors will increase the appraised value by an amount that reflects the rise in home prices in your neighborhood in the past two years.

“We start with the neighborhood, and if there are (an) adequate number of sales within the neighborhood, that’s where we stop,” she said. “We try to stay within one mile of the house.”

Reader Linda asked: Our home is on a section of agricultural acreage. We can see the total assessment when we look online, but not the breakdown of agricultural land and residential. Who can we contact to get the complete Reassessment Notice?

Beatty said that the best course of action is to email the assessment department at assessment@jacksongov.org with the subject line “Need Value Notice.”

Department employees are actively answering emails, and requests for value notices often take priority over more complex requests because they can be completed quickly.

“We’ll take care of those first. We want to make sure we take care of those to give people time to file their appeal,” Beatty said.

The county aimed to send out value notices in the mail by June 15. The deadline to appeal your valuation is July 10. You can also check your valuation online.

Reader Pam said: While my friends and family have had our property values double, it would be interesting to see how many other elected officials had little or no increase.

Anyone can go onto the assessment department’s website and look up the assessed value of any property in Jackson County — and how much that value has increased over the past five years. You can look up properties by address, the owner’s name or the parcel number.

Nine-digit parcel numbers represent personal property, usually meaning vehicles. Real estate parcel numbers are 17 digits long with lots of dashes, and usually return three property values: “market value,” “taxable value” and “assessed value.”

The market value shows the assessment department’s full valuation of your home, a department employee confirmed to The Star over email. To see the percentage increase of your home’s value, look at how the market value in 2023 compares to the market value in 2021.

The county hasn’t yet calculated the percentage increases in valuations seen in each taxing jurisdiction — but it plans to certify its calculations over the weekend. We’ll follow up next week once we have data on the average increases in the Kansas City area.

A reader also asked: For those of us who have managed to pay off our homes, when and how do our insurance providers learn about their increased market value?

The county does not send assessed values to any insurance companies, Beatty said.

While your insurance company could technically look up your address through the department’s online system to see your new valuation, she added that many do not rely on assessed values to set insurance rates.

Instead, the companies often do their own calculations to get a home’s “replacement” value, which may be different from its assessed value.

It’s also important to keep in mind that homeowners who have paid off their homes are still required to pay property taxes.

Do you have more questions about property assessment in Jackson County? Ask the Service Journalism team at kcq@kcstar.com.