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May 5, 14 tweets

🚨Your property tax bill is wrong. The county knows. They are not going to tell you.

51 million US homes are overassessed. Only 5% of owners appeal.

Average successful appeal saves $1,346 a year.

20 minutes with AI tells you if you are overpaying:

1/ The thing nobody tells homeowners

Your county does not assess your home individually. They run a mass reappraisal algorithm across thousands of properties at once. It makes mistakes. A lot of mistakes.

The National Taxpayers Union estimates 30 to 60% of US properties are overassessed. That is up to 51 million homeowners overpaying right now.

Only 5% of homeowners ever appeal. The county is counting on that.

2/ How much money is sitting on the table

Americans paid $797 billion in property taxes in 2024. Property taxes have risen 30% since 2019.

The average successful appeal saves $1,346 per year. Over 40% of US properties could save $100 or more annually if their owners appealed.

Multiply that across 10 years of homeownership. Most people are leaving $13,000 to $30,000 unrecovered.

3/ The first prompt: pull the assessment

Open your county assessor's website. Find your property record. It will list assessed value, market value, square footage, lot size, number of bedrooms, and any features the county has on file.

Print it. Then open Claude or ChatGPT and paste the entire record.

Type:
"Review this property assessment record and flag any factual errors. Compare the listed square footage, lot size, bedroom count, and features to what would be typical for a home of this assessed value. Identify any discrepancies that would justify an appeal."

4/ The errors AI finds first

The most common mistakes counties make:

• Square footage 100 to 300 feet too high
• Wrong number of bedrooms or bathrooms
• Listed features the home does not have (pool, finished basement, garage)
• Wrong lot size
• Wrong property classification (residential vs commercial)

Each one of these alone is grounds for appeal. AI flags them in seconds.

5/ The second prompt: pull comparable sales

Open Zillow or Redfin. Find 5 homes that sold in your neighborhood within the last 12 months that are similar to yours in size, age, and lot.
Paste the addresses, sale prices, square footage, and sale dates into AI.

Type:
"My home is assessed at [amount]. These are 5 comparable sales in the last 12 months. Calculate whether my assessment is in line with these comparables. If it is high, calculate the percentage overassessment and the dollar amount I am overpaying annually given my county tax rate of [rate]."

The output gives you the exact number you need to file the appeal.

6/ The third prompt: write the appeal

"Write a property tax appeal letter to [county] assessor's office. My address is [address]. The assessed value is [amount]. I am appealing on the grounds that the assessment is [percentage] higher than comparable sales in my neighborhood. Reference the following 5 comparables: [paste]. Reference these factual errors in my property record: [paste]. Request a reduction to [target amount]. Format as a formal appeal."

What used to take a tax attorney 3 hours. AI does in 4 minutes.

7/ The fourth prompt: prepare for the hearing

If your appeal goes to a hearing, paste the county's response letter into AI and ask:

"This is the county's response to my appeal. Identify every weakness in their argument. List the questions I should ask the appeals board. Tell me what evidence I should bring to the hearing. End with the three strongest points to make in my opening statement."

Most people walk into appeal hearings unprepared. The county has a professional appraiser on staff. AI levels that field.

8/ The numbers that should change how you think about this

40 to 60% of appeals succeed. With strong evidence: 65 to 85%.

Texas alone had 2,018,000 property tax protests filed in a recent year. Cook County, Illinois homeowners saw 16% increases in 2025. West Garfield Park homeowners averaged 133% increases.

The system is broken. Appeals are the only mechanism that works. AI is the only tool that makes appeals accessible to people who cannot afford a $400 an hour tax attorney.

9/ The deadline that matters

Every county has an appeal deadline. Most are 30 to 90 days from when you receive your assessment notice. Miss it by one day and you wait until next year.

Open your county assessor's website right now. Find the appeal deadline for your address. If it has not passed, you have a real chance.

If you missed this year's deadline, set a calendar reminder for 60 days before next year's notice arrives. The clock starts then.

10/ One thing to know

Counties do not tell you that your assessment is wrong. They send the bill. They cash the check. The burden is entirely on you to challenge it.

The 5% of homeowners who appeal save an average of $1,346 every year. The 95% who do not are subsidizing them.

AI just made the gap between those two groups disappear.

51 million overassessed homes. $1,346 average savings. 20 minutes with AI to find out if you are one of them.

Send this to anyone who owns a home and has never checked.

Sources:
National Taxpayers Union Foundation (overassessment estimates)

US Census Bureau Quarterly Tax Revenue 2024 ($797 billion total)

ATTOM 2024 Annual Property Tax Report (average tax bill, year-over-year increases)

Realtor.com property tax appeal analysis

Bankrate, Pete Sepp, National Taxpayers Union

Cook County Treasurer's Office (2025 increase data)

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