What is fair market value?
Fair market value is the amount of money a buyer would be willing to pay a seller for a property offered for sale in an open market, over a reasonable period of time, where both buyer and seller are well informed and neither is under pressure to buy or sell.

Transfers of real estate are analyzed annually. Nearly 95% involve sales of residential properties. Sales for previous years are also reviewed when warranted. Information is gathered from buyers, sellers, and real estate professionals. The selling prices are then compared to the assessed values to arrive at an assessment / sales ratio. The county is required by law to annually assess at fair market value as of January 1 of each year.

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1. What is annual reassessment?
2. What is the effective date of my assessment?
3. What is fair market value?
4. What sales were used to determine my assessed value?
5. How can a property be assessed for more than its recent purchase price?
6. Why did my assessment change?
7. Why did my structure value go up? I didn't make any changes to my house.
8. Why did my house go up at a higher rate than my neighbor’s house?
9. Why did my assessed value change more than reported in sources like Zillow, etc?
10. Why did my assessment go up more than the percent change advertised in the local newspapers for my market area and property type?
11. What does land value represent and why did it change?
12. Why do property values have separate land and building values and why did they change? I own a condo; why do I have a land value?
13. Is there a law that prevents assessments from changing more than a certain amount from year to year?
14. Is there any effect on real estate values for major floodplain acreage?