DETROIT – Detroit residents have struggled with property tax assessments that were too high for years, but a new app is aimed at helping Detroiters appeal their taxes.
Detroiters like Tahira Ahmad who lives on the west side and has been overpaying taxes on her home and her late mother’s home for years.
“All told it was $15,000!” Ahmad said. “I pinched, I crocheted, I made my hat, I made my earrings -- I just did all I could to make extra money to pay those extra over-taxations.”
She turned to a group called the Coalition for Property Tax Justice (CPTJ). They walked her through their new app called Search and Compare, which is now available for all Detroiters, and helped her appeal to the city and save money.
The process is easy: Just enter an address and the app then shows other properties around a given house. Homeowners then select the ones that best match their home and the app creates a side-by-side comparison and a document.
That document can be used by a homeowner to turn over to the city to back them up during an assessment appeal. The coalition estimates more than one in ten Detroiters are being overtaxed, with devastating consequences.
“When people’s property taxes are too high, and they’re not able to pay those taxes, it can force them into property tax foreclosure,” said Marie Sheehan of Street Democracy, a part of the CPTJ. “So we’re seeing that right now. We’re seeing staggering numbers of property tax foreclosure.”
The city says there’s no need for the app, they say they already have a strong tax appeals system that’s open to everyone.
“If I had my wish, every single property owner in the city of Detroit would go through the assessor’s review,” said Alvin Horhn, Detroit’s Deputy CFO and assessor. “I want people to come to the assessor’s review, it will put to rest questions on how fair and open the process is.”
All of this comes as we learned this year that just about everyone’s property value went up about 20% in the city of Detroit, most of it due to inflation.
The deadline for appeals and the end of the assessor’s review of property taxes is Feb. 22, 2023.
To access the new Search and Compare resource, visit the Coalition’s website by clicking here.