TOLEDO, Ohio — If you live in Lucas County, you may have gotten a letter in the mail with your new property value.
It may have given you a little sticker shock when it comes to how much more you'll be paying in property taxes.
There is a way to dispute that number down, but you're running out of time. The Lucas County Auditor's Office is hosting the last of three weeks of property value review sessions.
Deb Laviolette, who owns a home in Holland, came to see if she could get to the bottom of her newly-assessed property value.
"I don't have anything against the evaluations because everything goes up, but not by that much," Laviolette said.
Property values in each county are reassessed every six years by the state of Ohio. This time around, Lucas County residents saw a big increase.
"This year we went through an average increase of 29.5%," Lucas County Auditor Katie Moline said. "So I wanted to ensure citizens had the opportunity to meet with auditor's office staff, file the informal property value review so that way if they think that value is inaccurate or if there were things that happened to their house, condition of the home, that we make sure we capture all that data accurately."
Moline said you don't need to bring anything with you to the review sessions, but you can note any comparable home values in your neighborhood, which is what Laviolette did.
"I went on Areis and did all my comparisons and we weren't even close," Laviolette said. "They had my house like $70,000 more than my comparables. And you know, computer glitch could be, but I thought we better come and check and get it in motion."
Laviolette said she's happy with the process and will be hearing from the auditor's office in the next few weeks about what they come up with.
Moline said to keep in mind everything has to be approved by the state and homeowners who aren't satisfied with their property value can file a formal review come January.
"We can go through the value then in a formal process and if it's still inaccurate, we have the ability to change it without state control of it," Moline said.
If you'd like to submit a property tax review, time is running out.
You can do it online through the Lucas County Auditor's Office by Oct. 11. Or you have one more opportunity to come to the Holy Trinity Greek Community Center at 740 N. Superior Street in Toledo and talk with someone in person.
Representatives from the auditor's office will be there Friday, Oct. 11 from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.
