Cobb Tax Assessor’s office to hold taxpayer info sessions

Cobb County property tax notices have gone out this week, and assessments are going up again.

The Cobb Tax Assessor’s Office is holding special information sessions starting next week to provide assistance and information to taxpayers who may be thinking of appealing their assessments.

The first of those sessions takes place Tuesday, May 14, from 6-8 p.m. at East Cobb Library (4880 Lower Roswell Road). Another session there takes place at the same time on June 4.

Sessions continue during the appeal season in June, including on June 3 and 10 at the Mountain View Regional Library (3320 Sandy Plains Road) from 6-8 p.m.

Cobb Tax Assessor Stephen White is projecting a 7.5 percent increase in the Cobb tax digest from 2023, when it rose by 13 percent.

The estimated Cobb tax digest is expected to surpass $60 billion for the first time, following a record 2023 tax digest of around $55 billion.

“The real estate market is still moving forward in Cobb County,” but not as much as the last two years, White said in an interview with Cobb government spokesman Ross Cavitt (you can watch it here).

“I don’t see them as accelerating as fast as in the prior years.”

That may not be much of a consolation for homeowners who have seen their assessments skyrocket in recent years, and without a millage rate rollback by the Cobb Board of Commissioners.

“Instead of going through 65 miles an hour last year, we’re going through 35,” is how White described the somewhat cooling effect of the assessments.

The digest projection guides commissioners during the budget process, which takes place over the summer. The Cobb government fiscal year 2025 runs from Oct. 1, 2024 through Sept. 30, 2024.

The 2024 assessment notices are based on valuations during calendar year 2023.

For the county as a whole, the average home sales price last year was $477,783, an increase from $457,065 in 2022.

But that average price jumped even higher in the two years before that, from $346,715 in 2020 to $400,799 in 2021.

By comparison, the 2019 average was $319,454.

State law requires counties and cities to provide annual updates on the fair market value of residential and commercial properties.

Revaluations take place in selected neighborhoods (seen in the blue on the map), and White said that figure this year is 140,000 properties.

White said only a small number of taxpayers—less than 3 percent—file appeals, and he anticipates fewer numbers will do so this year.

Property owners can find their assessment notices on the Cobb Tax Assessor’s website.