Good reappraisal requires good data, but not all “data” serves the same purpose. Assessors need accurate property characteristics data to produce fair values. Taxpayers, elected officials, and county leaders need clear public information so they are working from the same basic understanding of what reappraisal does, what it does not do, and how it affects tax bills.
To help provide that shared starting point, here is information presented at the most recent North Carolina Association of County Commissioners annual conference, held in August 2025.
Below are additional resources that may help taxpayers, elected officials, county leaders, and local tax officials better understand reappraisal. They include explanations of how reappraisal relates to assessed values, tax rates, and tax bills; detailed legal explanations from School of Government faculty; property tax policy research from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy; videos; and other county materials showing how reappraisal works in practice across North Carolina.
Does Reappraisal Raise Property Taxes?
Reappraisal years often produce a familiar concern: “My value went up, so my taxes must be going up.” Sometimes that concern is stated even more broadly — that reappraisal itself is the cause of the property tax problem.
That reaction is understandable. Reappraisal is visible, personal, and arrives in the mailbox before most taxpayers hear much about the budget or tax rate. So it is not surprising to hear people say, in one form or another, “The reappraisal is what is causing the tax problem.”
Not so.
That statement skips over the most important part of the process: reappraisal does not determine the total amount of property tax collected (the levy). Reappraisal determines how that amount is distributed.
Put another way, the property tax levy is the pie. The governing board’s budget and tax rate decisions determine the size of the pie. Reappraisal determines how that pie is divided among taxable properties.
An individual property’s assessed value may increase or decrease after reappraisal, but that change alone does not determine whether the owner’s future tax bill will increase or decrease. The tax bill depends on both the property’s share of the tax base and the total levy ultimately adopted by the governing board.
It is also important to remember that an assessed value increase or decrease at reappraisal does not represent a one-year change. In North Carolina, new assessed values may reflect as many as eight years of cumulative market value change. During that time, different neighborhoods, property types, and market segments may change at different rates. That creates unequal assessment levels throughout the jurisdiction. Some properties may become over-assessed relative to current market value, while others may become under-assessed.
That is one of the reasons regular reappraisal is so important. The longer a jurisdiction goes without reappraising property values, the more tax inequities can grow. Reappraisal does not create those inequities; it reveals them and provides the mechanism for correcting them. See this brief from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. The brief continues with the policy opinion that regular revaluations should be paired with tax rate reductions during periods of rising values.
As my colleague Chris McLaughlin’s post explains in more detail, when countywide assessed values increase, the governing board may lower the tax rate enough to avoid increasing the total levy. In North Carolina, that published rate is commonly referred to as the revenue-neutral tax rate. Revenue neutral does not mean every individual tax bill will remain the same. Some bills may increase, some may decrease, and some may stay about the same. It means the tax rate has been adjusted so the jurisdiction does not increase the total levy simply because the tax base was updated.
Several resources help explain this distinction. A presentation at the 2026 NCTCA Conference used fictitious Tarheel County to show how inequity can accumulate in the years before a reappraisal and how reappraisal can restore equity. A Wake County heat map showed similar assessment inequity before the county’s 2024 reappraisal. The map helps explain why reappraisal is needed, makes the issue local and personal for county residents, and helps show where improved equity is most needed during the reappraisal process. These visuals show why the issue is not simply whether values went up, but whether properties were being assessed at similar percentages of market value before reappraisal.
This discussion is not limited to rising markets. Chris McLaughlin’s 2009 bulletin was written during the Great Recession, when economic conditions were causing concern about declining values. Even then, the same basic distinction applied: revaluation alone does not equal a higher tax bill, and the tax-rate vote and the revaluation decision are separate issues.
Shea Denning’s 2008 bulletin, written just before the recession, explains the legal appraisal and assessment purpose of reappraisal in North Carolina, as well as the labor-intensive process counties must follow. It also emphasizes the transparency built into the statutory process.
The bottom line is this: reappraisal does not decide how much property tax a county or city will collect. Reappraisal updates assessed values so the tax burden can be distributed more fairly. The governing board decides the levy. The assessor determines how that levy is fairly distributed across taxable property.
So when someone says, “Reappraisal caused my tax increase,” the more accurate answer is: Reappraisal may have changed your share of the tax base. But whether the tax levy increases is decided later, through the budget and tax-rate process.
Reappraisal Podcast
This informal and informative podcast featuring Brad Fowler, Alamance County Tax Administrator, provides a conversational discussion between an assessor and a realtor about property taxes, appraisal, reappraisal, equity, the revenue-neutral tax rate, and more. Don’t miss what Mr. Fowler says is the biggest misconception about reappraisal and property tax beginning at the 11-minute mark. Thank you for sharing, Mr. Fowler.
County Reappraisal Videos
Several counties have created videos explaining how North Carolina’s reappraisal laws apply locally.
Reappraisal Video and Audio
Local tax officials, defined in G.S 105-273(10a), can be heroes of equity through better understanding of reappraisal. This is a presentation called Equity in Eight Minutes.
A video interview with counties discusses “Data” and “Neighborhoods” as they relate to reappraisal and the early use of artificial intelligence.
UNC School of Government’s Center for Public Leadership and Governance provides two podcasts on reappraisal for elected officials: