AppealSeal
Appeal your home's property tax in minutes to get a refund!
157 followers
Appeal your home's property tax in minutes to get a refund!
157 followers
This is our first full launch! Until now, appealing your property taxes meant hiring an agency that took 30% of your savings or spending hours doing it yourself. AppealSeal makes the whole process effortless. With higher interest rates since the COVID years, it’s more important than ever for homeowners from the last 6–8 years to check if they’re overpaying. No one likes overpaying in taxes!
AppealSeal
@philippberner This is such a real problem, most homeowners have no idea how arbitrary those annual increases are, or how much money gets left on the table simply because the appeals process is so obscure and intimidating. The fact that you caught your own place being overvalued by ~$300K really highlights how common this must be.
Love how AppealSeal turns something painful and time-consuming into a quick, data-driven check. Making it free to see whether someone qualifies is huge, it removes the biggest barrier to even starting the process.
Curious how accurate the automated valuations are compared to what county assessors typically accept. Have you seen a high success rate with the appeal packages so far?
Really impressive work, this could save a lot of Californians a lot of money.
AppealSeal
@fernando_scharnick thank you for your thoughtful comment.
The foundation of the calculations is this California State manual: https://boe.ca.gov/proptaxes/pdf/pub30.pdf
On the assessment accuracy, there are a few things I haven't implemented yet. Right now I don't do % adjustments on the comparable properties to account for minor differences. eg. a comparable property has 1/2 bathroom more, whats the impact on the value.
I implemented a scoring algorithm that matches the document from the link. I then take the $/sqft price of the comparable homes and use the median of that. This is the basis of multiplying your homes sqft to get to the assessed value.
From reading other appeals guides for the assessors office, it's better to use a weighted algorithm that favors properties that are closer to the subject instead of the median.
Those two things are future improvements to be made.
But the good thing right now, it's not a deal breaker as the appeal is the home owners "Opinion of Value" and is the basis for a negotiation with the assessor or the basis for the conversation in front of the appeals board (how does all this work anyway - https://www.appealseal.com/content/docs/how-the-appeals-board-works)
From my research with San Mateo county, the general opinion of value of the home owners is median -13%, with the actual reduction being 9-10% after. See: https://www.appealseal.com/content/blog/san-mateo-tax-appeal-in-numbers
Also 97% of the cases settle with a negotiation with the assessor and never go to a hearing. Thats what happened to me in the past two years. The assessor always called me the day before and offered me a number and asked if I'd be fine accepting that without going to the hearing.
@philippberner Thanks for the detailed breakdown, really appreciate the transparency. The current approach already makes a ton of sense, and it’s great to hear you’re planning weighted comps and adjustment factors next. And those negotiation stats are surprisingly reassuring. Excited to see how AppealSeal evolves!
AppealSeal
@fernando_scharnick Thank you... I'm curious too :)
I hope I get the same public data for LA county these days for all the past years... thats going to be interesting
LendLayer
Love it. Great example of using AI / development to create efficiency in previously gatekept, outdated systems.
AppealSeal
@moxon thank you. Yes, this is a classic problem of: Not possible before AI, and now it's possible.
The unstructured data in real estate that is classified with AI makes this possible.
I think there is a whole class of problems, especially also interacting with government. Which will be hard on government for a while, since they live in a "human processed" world while the incoming requests are going to AI generated by ChatGPT for everyone.
Even the public record request for how San Mateo processes the appeals (https://www.appealseal.com/content/blog/san-mateo-tax-appeal-in-numbers) was AI generated.
Birthday Cleaner
Congrats on the launch @philippberner 👏
AppealSeal
It’s a really interesting problem you’re tackling. Just curious — have you come across any edge cases based on county-specific rules or different property types? In any case, great to see this product, and congratulations on the launch.
AppealSeal
@samir_mukherjee thanks for your interest. The rules are given by the state. Edge cases are mostly around rural areas or unique homes, where finding comparable homes is hard. It works really well for cities and suburbs where there is a lot of similar housing stock in close proximity.
I need to improve things also for home that have a special feature, such as first row ocean view, vs homes 2 blocks back.
Not in California myself, but the concept is really smart.
Are you planning to expand to other US states, or is California's system unique?
Good luck with the launch!
AppealSeal
Raycast
This is great — and it actually did a good job on my property! I went through this process on my own earlier this year (my assessed property value was way over comparables in the area) and the amount I was able to reduce my taxes was pretty close to what AppealSeal found!
As I was going through AppealSeal I was wondering what the catch was, or how you make money.
Since the CTA is "Check Now For Free", I wondered — ok, great, but you're going to charge me for a report, or try to take a % of the refund, right?
Perhaps you could clarify that?
Raycast
Also, might have a temporary hotel Wi-Fi issue this morning, but I got this error after I went through the onboarding questionnaire. Perhaps you could run this check when someone first enters their address rather than after they've gone through the flow?
AppealSeal
@chrismessina Would you be able to DM me the address you entered on X? I just wrote you there.
This might happen when there is insufficient county data. Some counties leave out the sqft of homes, so then I can't compare because it's a key factor. I'm just surprised, because I build a nicer error page explaining this. So I'd love to check
I can't check that upfront when you enter the address, since it happens when I pull all the data together.
AppealSeal
@chrismessina sorry for the late response here... somehow didn't see there was a page two.
This is great feedback!! Do you feel that this held you back to enter your address? The wondering how I make money? Looking through your product lens, you'd clarify that on the landing page, or just making it more clear once you looked up your property?
Right now I just charge $100 for the analysis. Hopefully tomorrow I finish up filling those forms for you. and maybe I even get around to mail them for you with a check to the county.
That would be my ideal, then it's checkout, sign, and appealed.
Also thanks for validating that it's pretty close to what you were able to reduce. Was that the amount the assessor offered you?
PS: Nice job on Raycast!
I just gave this a shot, got my form and have a letter ready to send to CA with a $46 check... All in this is $146. Might save me 1k+ Here's to believing :)
AppealSeal
@am_i_me_yet Amazing! thank you. I think I also just emailed you. I'd love to hear more feedback. Thanks for the trust