Appeal Your Property Assessment

Nothing on this page is legal or tax advice, and every specific in it — ratios, dates, program names — changes. Treat it as a map of how the system works, then verify the current numbers with Allegheny County before you act on them.

Why this matters more here than in most places

Most counties re-assess property on some kind of cycle. Allegheny County does not. Assessments here are anchored to a base year that is now long in the past, and the county has gone many years without a countywide reassessment. Nothing about that self-corrects.

What that produces is neighbors on the same street, in nearly identical houses, paying wildly different tax bills — because their assessments were set at different moments, under different conditions, and were never trued up against each other. If your house was last touched by the assessment system at a bad moment, or was assessed after a sale at a strong price while the house next door has coasted since the base year, you carry that difference forever.

There is no office reviewing your file for fairness. The only mechanism that moves a number that is too high is a homeowner filing an appeal.

The Common Level Ratio, without the jargon

Here is the piece that confuses almost everyone, stated as plainly as it can be:

Your assessment is expressed in base-year dollars, not today's dollars. So when an appeal board compares your assessment to what your house is worth now, it needs a conversion factor. That factor is the Common Level Ratio — a percentage, published annually, that translates present-day market value into the base-year scale the assessment lives on.

In practice it works like a discount. Today's market value multiplied by the ratio gives you the assessed value that would be considered fair for your house. When the ratio goes down, the assessment that is fair for your house goes down too — even though the house itself hasn't changed at all.

As of this writing, the ratio applicable to the 2026 tax year was set at roughly 50%, down from the mid-50s in recent years. Do not rely on that figure — it is reset annually, it has moved meaningfully and repeatedly in recent years, and it is the single most important input in this whole exercise. Confirm the current ratio with the county before you calculate anything.

And here is the part that costs people real money: a lower ratio does not lower your tax bill automatically. Nobody applies it to your account on your behalf. You only ever get the benefit of a favorable ratio by filing an appeal and asking for it.

The arithmetic, with round numbers

This is illustrative, not advice — real round numbers so the shape of the math is visible. Assume the ratio is 50%.

1. Be honest about what your house would actually sell for today. Say $200,000. Not what you wish, not the number from a website estimate you like — what a real buyer would pay in its current condition.
2. Multiply by the ratio: $200,000 × 50% = $100,000. That is roughly the assessed value that would be considered fair for that house.
3. Now look up your actual assessed value on the county's property portal. If it says $100,000, you are in the right neighborhood and there is probably nothing to win here.
4. If it says $150,000, you are being taxed as though your house were worth $300,000 in today's money. That gap is worth questioning, and it repeats every year you leave it alone.

Do this arithmetic before anything else. It takes ten minutes and it tells you whether the rest of this page applies to you at all. A difference of a few thousand dollars in assessed value is noise and probably isn't worth the effort. A difference of tens of thousands is a recurring annual overcharge.

The deadline is the whole ballgame

Allegheny County appeals are filed with the Board of Property Assessment Appeals and Review, usually written as BPAAR. If you're searching for the right office, search "Allegheny County BPAAR" or start from the county's own website — the county publishes the current forms, the current ratio, and the current filing window in one place.

In recent years the annual filing window has closed in early September, for the following tax year. The deadline for the 2026 tax year, for example, fell in September 2025. That timing surprises people: you are appealing next year's taxes during this year's late summer.

This is exactly the kind of deadline that moves. Verify the current year's date on the county's site before you rely on any of it. What does not change is the consequence: miss the window and you wait a full year, paying the number you think is wrong the entire time. If you're reading this in late summer, check the date today rather than after the weekend.

How to actually do it

People imagine this is a courtroom. It usually isn't. The realistic version:

• Find your current assessed value. The county maintains a public real estate portal where you can look up any parcel by address. Write down the assessed value and the parcel number — you will need both.
• Gather evidence of real market value. This is the entire case. Useful material includes recent sales of genuinely comparable houses nearby (similar size, style, condition, and street — not just the same ZIP code); your purchase price and settlement sheet if you bought recently, which is often the strongest evidence there is; an appraisal if you have a recent one; dated photos of condition problems like a failing roof, foundation cracks, or an unusable kitchen; and written contractor estimates for major repairs the house needs.
• File the appeal form by the deadline, following the county's current instructions for how it must be submitted.
• Attend the hearing. These are often short and have in recent years frequently been held by phone or video. You are not performing. You are showing a few people evidence of what the house is worth and asking that the number reflect it.

You can do this yourself, and many people do. There is no requirement to hire anyone. Attorneys who handle assessment appeals commonly work on contingency — a share of the tax savings rather than an hourly fee — which can make sense for a large gap or a complicated property. That's an option, not a requirement, and the terms are worth reading closely before you sign.

Keep every document you file and receive. Assessment paperwork belongs in the house file described in our homeowner's paper trail guide — you will want it the next time this comes up, and it comes up again.

The honest risks

Two things nobody selling appeal services leads with:

• An appeal reviews the assessment in both directions. The board is deciding what the correct number is, not merely whether to grant your reduction. If your house is genuinely under-assessed — which happens constantly here, especially for long-held houses that have never been touched since the base year — raising your hand can result in a higher assessment, not a lower one. This is why the arithmetic comes first. If the math says you're already ahead, leave it alone.
• School districts can file appeals of their own. Taxing bodies have the same right to appeal that you do, and the most common trigger is a recent sale at a price well above the existing assessment. If you just bought a house for far more than its assessed value, understand that the assessment may get revisited whether or not you do anything. Budgeting for that possibility is more comfortable than being surprised by it.

While you're in there: two other reductions

• The homestead and farmstead exclusion. If the house is your primary residence and you have never applied, you may be leaving a reduction on the table. It is one short form, filed once, through the county — search "Allegheny County homestead exclusion" for the current form and deadline. Plenty of longtime owners have simply never done it. This one is unrelated to appealing, has no downside risk, and applies to your primary residence only.
• Senior and low-income relief programs. Allegheny County and the City of Pittsburgh have administered programs for older and lower-income homeowners under names like Act 77, and Pennsylvania runs a statewide Property Tax/Rent Rebate program. Eligibility rules, income limits, and application windows vary by program and change over time — search them by name, or ask the county treasurer's office which ones you qualify for. If you have an older parent or neighbor on a fixed income, this is a genuinely useful thing to mention to them.

The whole exercise is one honest estimate of value, one multiplication, and one look at a county website. If the numbers line up, you've spent ten minutes and can stop thinking about it. If they don't, you've found an overcharge that would otherwise have renewed itself every year for as long as you own the house.