Academics Support Assessors' Better Home Data Campaign

A group of sixteen academics from institutions across the country released a letter supporting large assessment jurisdictions in their campaign for federal home appraisal data. This effort has been spearheaded by Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi and Maricopa County Assessor Eddie Cook.

The Cook County Assessor’s Office and a bipartisan coalition of assessors representing more than 10% of all Americans have called for access to the Uniform Appraisal Database (UAD), which contains high-quality parcel data from home appraisals. With better home data, assessments will be more accurate. 

“When assessments are based on outdated information, whether through neglect, the failure or refusal of other public and private entities to share data, or technical or financial constraints, the accuracy of assessments suffers,” write the group. “As a direct result, the burden of paying property taxes is too often shifted to properties that are unable to carry that burden.

“Making information from the UAD available to assessors has great potential to make property taxes more accurate for all homeowners.”

This letter comes soon after the National Association of Counties passed a resolution in support of the data release proposal at its annual conference this July. The resolution, sponsored by Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi and Maricopa County Assessor Eddie Cook, was approved unanimously.

“With access to this appraisal data, we would have more and better information than ever before about the properties we assess,” said Maricopa County Assessor Cook. “I’m gratified to see the broad consensus that this is a crucial way to make property taxes fairer for all.” 

Nationwide, property assessments tend to be regressive. This means that less valuable homes are overvalued, while expensive homes are undervalued.

The effect of this can be that working-class homeowners end up paying more than their fair share in property taxes, particularly compared to the wealthiest homeowners.

More accurate property data could help alleviate this regressivity, which researchers have suggested is due to a lack of information about homes.

“Assessors, county governments, and world-class researchers are all in agreement that this data would make property taxes across the United States fairer,” said Assessor Kaegi. “It’s time for the federal government to act on this proposal, which could help ease the property tax burden significantly for working-class families in Cook County and beyond.”

A copy of the letter is included as an attachment below.