Bent Out of Shape About Your Property Tax Assessment? Here’s How to Appeal It — and Maybe Even Cut Your Bill
If you’re scratching your head over your 2025 property assessment, here’s how you can clear things up. And here’s what to do if all you want to do is cut yourself a break on your taxes.
Is this house worth a million dollars? Not on your life. But if, as one local homeowner complained, the owner received a property tax assessment 200 percent higher than the last one, the city would have valued it at about $1.5 million. You can appeal your assessment if you believe the city missed the mark. Read on to learn how. / Photograph of house in Mount Airy courtesy of Berivan Ortega via Keller Williams Main Line
At least the City of Philadelphia is now staying abreast of the changing real estate market: It reassessed property values citywide this year.
The last reassessment took place two years ago. In the interim, house values citywide fell from their two-year-ago levels, according to the Zillow Home Value Index. But their assessed values rose 11 percent.
And, as was the case with the last property reassessment, the changes in assessed value vary widely from neighborhood to neighborhood, block to block, and even house to house on the same block.
The hikes shouldn’t be as dramatic as the doubling and tripling of assessed values some upset Philly homeowners received the last time around. This is the second time the city has used the computer-assisted mass assessment (CAMA) system to reassess property values.
But since the new assessed values vary even down to the granular level, chances are some of those assessments are off. If you think yours is one, read on for how to appeal it. If you don’t, but you find the new, higher property tax assessment — $330 higher on average, according to the city — more than you can handle, jump to the end of this article to learn how you can make paying property taxes more manageable or even cut them.
How to appeal your property tax assessment
The agency that conducts the assessment is the Office of Property Assessment (OPA). That the OPA was able to do a mass reassessment two years after the last one is a step forward; according to state law, the OPA is supposed to reassess property values individually every year. The CAMA system makes the reassessment process simpler and more accurate, but it doesn’t remove all possibility of error.
The good news this time around is that, even though the city missed the May deadline for completing the assessment, it did send valuation notices out early enough that homeowners won’t have to scramble to start the appeals process.
Appealing your assessment in Philadelphia is a two-step process because different agencies conduct the assessment and the appeals — though it is possible for you to skip one of the steps. Before you start the appeals process:
1. Ask yourself if you really can appeal your assessment.
Vern Anastasio, principal at the Anastasio Law Firm and a noted expert on city zoning matters, says that before you start down the appeal road, you should ask yourself a serious question: “If I were to list my house for sale tomorrow, what would I ask for it?”
“If the number you would ask for is equal or pretty darn close to the assessed value,” he says, “then I wouldn’t bother appealing.”
Even if you have no plans to sell your house, ever, doing this little mental exercise will be worth it. But if you’d rather not ask that question, there is another way to determine whether your appeal is likely to succeed. The city has an interactive map site, atlas.phila.gov, where you can find sales history and assessed values for individual properties citywide. You can use this site to look up the values of properties similar to your own in your neighborhood and compare the city’s proposed assessment with those figures.
2. Request a first-level review.
The next step in contesting your assessment is called “first-level review,” and it takes place within OPA itself.
In the first-level review, the OPA checks its math to determine whether it may have made a mistake in calculating its assessment. But for you to prevail over the OPA’s number-crunchers, you will need to prove at least one of the following:
- that the characteristics of your property that affect its valuation are incorrect
- that the valuation is indeed too high or too low based on those characteristics or other factors
- that the valuation is not uniform with other similar properties citywide
- that there is an incorrect or missing exemption or abatement
You should have gotten a request form with your notice of proposed assessment. If you lost or don’t have the form, call the OPA at 215-686-9200 to request a replacement. First-level review requests must be submitted by Monday, October 7th.
3. Appeal your assessment formally.
In most cases, the first-level review is unlikely to find an error that would cause the OPA to revise its assessment. In that case, the only way you can contest it is to file an appeal with the Board of Revision of Taxes (BRT), the city agency charged with hearing assessment disputes.
If you’re certain that your assessment is out of whack, you can proceed directly to this step. But before you file an appeal, Anastasio says, “Find an appraiser and secure an appraisal of your property. If the appraisal is, in fact, less than the assessed value, then you’ve got something upon which you can build a real appeal.” That appraisal, he cautions, should not be of the “drive-by” variety, where someone just drives past your property and eyeballs it.
Whether you go straight to the appeal or wait for the first-level review, Anastasio says, “you can then file your appeal to the BRT, and you’ll be able to rely on the appraisal that was furnished to you by an appraiser.”
You can obtain the appeal forms from the BRT website. If you decide to appeal your property tax assessment to the BRT, the state-mandated deadline for filing your appeal is the first Monday in October. That’s also October 7th this year.
And there’s nothing stopping you from filing an appeal while you wait for the result of the first-level review, according to a City Hall spokesperson.
Appeal your property tax assessment — as soon as possible. / Photograph via Getty Images
If you can’t file your property tax assessment appeal in time
If you can’t do all that by this year’s deadline, you will need to file a special form to petition the BRT for a late appeal of your assessment. You can do this any time after October 7th.
A provision in state law allows property owners to file such petitions, but the late appeals are granted only under specific circumstances. Specifically, when instances of “fraud or its equivalent, duress or coercion” have caused the delay. State law considers “negligence on the part of administrative officials” to be the equivalent of fraud for purposes of filing a late appeal request.
If you file an appeal using the BRT’s nunc pro tunc (“now for then“) late appeal request form, the BRT will consider it. “The BRT will handle the requests on a case-by-case basis,” says executive director Carla Pagan, “but I cannot predict what the board will decide.”
Providing all the information requested on the “Petition Seeking Permission to Appeal Market Value Late (Nunc pro Tunc)” form will increase the odds that the BRT looks favorably upon it, so get your documents ready if you do go down this path. Here, you might want to consult an attorney who can assist you in this matter. Anastasio also recommends you consult one before your actual appeal goes before the BRT. (The city also allows you to have an attorney or other individual submit the review requests and appeal documents on your behalf.)
The BRT is still working to clear the more than 13,000 appeals it received for 2023 assessments. However, it has received only 3,000 appeals of 2024 assessments to date. Odds are that next year’s appeals will be closer in number to this year than last, but there will still be some delay in clearing your appeal if you file it because of the 2023 backlog.
Ways you can cut your tax bill
In 2022, the city expanded several programs designed to reduce property taxes for many Philadelphia homeowners and make paying manageable for the rest.
Homestead Exemption
One tax-relief option every eligible Philly homeowner should sign up for is the Homestead Exemption. If you own and live in your primary residence, and it’s located in the city, you are eligible for this exemption that reduces your assessed property value by $100,000. This should save most homeowners $1,399 in property taxes in 2025. And once you receive the Homestead Exemption, the city applies it automatically every year until you sell your home or move out of the city.
Homeowners whose properties have a tax abatement are not eligible to apply, but if the Homestead Exemption saves you more, you can have the abatement removed. The deadline to apply for the Homestead Exemption is December 1st of each year; but if you want to see the exemption reflected in your 2025 property tax bill, you should apply by September 13th.
Longtime Owner Occupants Program (LOOP)
Homeowners whose income falls below certain income thresholds may apply for the Longtime Owner Occupants Program (LOOP). If you have lived in your home for at least 10 years, and if your property taxes have jumped by 50 percent from the year before, or by 75 percent over the last five years, you may enter this program if you meet the other qualifications.
You may not take both the Homestead Exemption and LOOP at the same time, so you should determine which program cuts your tax bill more before you apply for either or switch from one to the other. You can, however, be enrolled in LOOP and also in other city and state tax-relief programs.
Senior Citizen Real Estate Tax Freeze
The third city tax-relief program is the Senior Citizen Real Estate Tax Freeze. Homeowners in this program will have their property taxes frozen once they enter the program; they will receive tax reductions but not tax increases if any occur.
More Tips
If you serve in the military and are called to active duty outside the state, a city tax credit program releases you from your tax obligations while you are on duty.
Finally, you can also apply for payment plans and payment deferrals at the city’s Get Real Estate Tax Relief website.
