Detroit homeowners should start seeing property tax bills that better reflect the true value of their home.
That’s because the city just finished its first city-wide residential property re-assessment in six decades.
The city says these new assessments are based on actual property sales from October 2014-September 2016, and other property-specific data.
Property taxes and property values have long been out of whack in many Detroit neighborhoods, contributing to an ongoing tax foreclosure crisis in the city.
... the vast majority of Detroit homeowners will see only modest changes to their tax bills.
But after a three-year, parcel-by-parcel review of more than 250,000 residential properties, the vast majority of Detroit homeowners will see only modest changes to their tax bills.
Fifty-three percent will see assessment reductions of 10% or less, while 41% will see an increase of 10% or less, city officials say.
But scattered pockets of the city will see much greater changes. There have been big increases in real estate values in and around the city’s downtown, and big drops in some neighborhoods near the city’s borders.
And there will be more significant differences between some properties than before, because each was assessed individually.
Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan and the city’s Chief Financial Officer, John Hill, say the updated assessments should help increase property tax collections.
They say that over the past two years, more estimate-based adjustments have boosted the collection rate from about 68% in 2014, to a projected 82% in 2016.
