OPEN BOOK: WHAT TO EXPECT

To start, let’s do a quick refresher on what Open Book is.

Open Book is held one time a year. It is an opportunity for property owners to discuss their values with the assessor and share any evidence to either update their property data or share a recent appraisal to contest their values and learn more about the assessment process.

During a maintenance year very little changes to value occur. In this case, Open Book is a short 2 hour period (which is state required) and tends to be less attended.

In other cases, Open Book is held during an Interim Market Update where sweeping value changes are made to bring the entire community back into compliance by reviewing and assessing all properties to market value (based on recent market sales). This Open Book is usually a few days or a week to ensure more time for property owners to meet with or share evidence with an assessor.

Our assessors take time to help educate property owners, share our sales analysis with them, and address their concerns.

The process is the same each year for Open Book and follows these simple steps:

Sending Notices: Assessors send notices to property owners that have a change in value. This could be due to a recent data change, a remodel, new construction, an interim market update, etc. Each notice shows the value change and explains in detail the owners rights when it comes to assessments.

Request for Assessment Review: Each notice explains that in order to contest their value an owner must fill out a Request for Assessment Review form. This information helps the assessor understand the owner’s reasoning and evidence before the Open Book meeting.

Open Book Meeting: An Open Book meeting is about 15 to 20 minutes. Our assessors are trained to ask a series of questions and take notes on every interaction (PR-130 forms) and save any evidence the owner brings in. After the meeting an assessor will review the information and respond to the owner with a change or no change notice.

Value Review: In most cases, if there is sufficient evidence provided to an assessor they can make a change to value. If there is not sufficient evidence a no change notice will be sent and the property owner. At this point the owner still has the right to contest their value at Board of Review.

Each property is unique, leading to a grey area in mass assessment. The Open Book period enables assessors to consider new information and evidence, resulting in a more precise valuation. Assessments are opinions of value based on facts, and the more information assessors have, the better their determination of assessed value will be.