The Cuyahoga County Board of Revision is now accepting challenges for 2022 property valuations. But the county is still a few months away from completing the review process for outstanding challenges from the previous tax year.
The county conducts a property appraisal every three years – the most recent one was in 2021. The Board of Revision said it's usual to see an increase in challenges from property tax owners following a reappraisal, but a hot housing market led to an even greater jump that year.
Board administrator Ron O'Leary says the board still has a few thousand more tax year challenges to review from 2021 and estimates that those will be completed in June.
More specifically, O’Leary said about 2500 hearings for tax year 2021 cases have been scheduled and less than 1000 still need to be scheduled. The board has completed nearly 6000 cases from tax year 2021 and a little more than 1000 are pending completion.
"If somebody wants to schedule a hearing sooner, just give us a call. We've got some degree of flexibility to move up a hearing,” O’Leary said.
To help handle the hearings, the board hired three temporary staff members last summer and plans to keep them on through this summer.
Property owners have the option to make their case in person, by phone or by video chat. O’Leary said about 50-percent of people would should up for hearings before 2020, but since implementing the video chat option, O’Leary said attendance has increased.
“We want to make it as easy as possible for people to come to their hearings. We want to make it as easy as possible for them to get information to us.”
O’Leary said the board received a few hundred challenges since opening the period to accept applications for 2022 reviews a few weeks ago.
He said there tends to be a drop off in the number of challenges the year after a property appraisal and a further drop off the year that.
“It’s just the nature of how the cycle is set up,” O’Leary said.
Cuyahoga Country residents can challenge property valuations for tax year 2022 online, in-person or by mail.
Property valuation challenges for tax year 2022 will be accepted until the end of March.
