The assessment notice from the city arrived in late February in a plain envelope that looks exactly like junk mail. I almost recycled it. Inside was a number that made me sit down: a state equalized value of $139,600, which, doubled, means the city thinks the Cape would sell for about $279,200. We paid $245,000 less than two years ago.
My first reaction was the obvious one: should we fight that? The notice listed the March Board of Review, where you can protest your assessment, so I spent the first week of March doing homework. Here's what I found, and why we didn't appeal.
The three numbers on the notice
The notice has several figures on it, and I'm writing these out because they confused me last year and nearly did again:
- Assessed value and SEV: $139,600. These are meant to be about half of market value, so $279,200 is the city's estimate of what the house is worth.
- Taxable value: $128,900. This is the number our property taxes are actually figured from. Last year it was $125,000.
- Principal Residence Exemption: 100 percent. We filed for it at closing. I checked that it was still there, because losing it would raise our taxes far more than anything else on the page.
The year after we bought, our taxable value uncapped and jumped to match the SEV, which is the story behind the escrow letter that raised our mortgage payment by $271 last August. Since then it has been capped again. As I understand it, taxable value can rise each year by the rate of inflation or 5 percent, whichever is less, until the house sells. Ours went up 3.1 percent.
The comps
I still wanted to know whether $279,200 was fair, so I did what the Board would expect: comparable sales. Using the city's online property records and a couple of listing sites, I looked for Capes within about half a mile that sold in the past year, roughly our size, with a detached garage.
Five fit. They sold for between $271,000 and $305,000. The $271,000 one had original everything and, according to its listing, a wet basement. The $305,000 one had a finished basement and a second bathroom, neither of which we have. The three in the middle were close to ours in size and condition and went for $278,000, $284,000 and $291,000.
So the city's number sits in the lower half of the range. I also pulled our property record card to look for mistakes, which seems to be the other common reason people appeal: wrong square footage, a bathroom you don't have, a finished basement that isn't. Ours was right. One and a half stories, about 1,150 square feet, one bath, unfinished basement and a 12-by-20 detached garage from 1952.
The part that actually decided it
This is where I nearly wasted an evening in front of the Board. Our taxes are figured on taxable value, $128,900, not on the SEV. Thanks to the cap, our taxable value already sits below the SEV. Say I'd gone in and won, and they'd cut our SEV from $139,600 to $134,000. Our taxable value would still be $128,900, because it's already lower than that, and our tax bill wouldn't change by a dollar.
As I understand it, a lower SEV only lowers our taxes if it drops below our taxable value. For us, that would mean convincing the Board the house is worth less than about $257,800, with five nearby sales saying otherwise. That isn't an appeal. That's a wish.
All of this is my understanding from reading the notice, the city's explanation sheet and one phone call to the assessor's office, where a very patient person confirmed I had it about right for our situation. Situations differ, especially in the year right after a purchase, so for your own notice, ask your assessor.
What it means for this year
Taxable value went from $125,000 to $128,900. If millage rates stay close to last year's, our 2026 taxes should come in somewhere around $100 to $140 more than 2025's $4,380. It goes into the house sheet as an estimate until the summer bill shows up in July.
It was a decent week otherwise. I got promoted at work, Tessa made a cake, and Moose chewed the corner off the assessment notice while it sat on the counter, which is the closest anyone in this house came to an appeal.
