Georgia Property Tax Appeal Heat Maps
Percent of Parcels Appealed, 2020
Percent of Parcels Appealed, 2019
Percent of Parcels Appealed, 2018
As noted in our blog post about property tax appeal stats, the overall percent of Georgia parcels with a property tax appeal was 2.9% in 2018. This value sits in the middle of the color shading of this heat map, meaning counties that have less than this overall rate of property tax appeals will be more green while those above this average will be more blue. Most counties are green, in fact, 136 of the 159 counties (about 86%) had less than this overall 2.9% property tax appeal rate in 2018.
Fulton County had a much higher rate of property tax appeals than any other county at 12.1% in 2018. Coupled with the fact that it also has more parcels than any other county (342,000), it really pushes up the overall rate of property tax appeals. If you were to remove Fulton County, the overall percent of parcels with a property tax appeal would drop to 2.1%. Other (smaller) counties that show as having a high percent of parcels appealed could be the result of a county-wide revaluation after years of stagnant property assessments. For example, Elbert County was second-highest in 2018 with 8.1% of parcels appealed (after a county-wide revaluation) but had only 1.9% of parcels appealed in 2017 (see below).
Percent of Parcels Appealed, 2017
In 2017, the county with the highest rate of property tax appeals was Muscogee County at an astounding 16.2%, about 10x their normal rate. This is the highest rate of any county in any year (data back to 2015). The overall number of property tax appeals filed in 2017 was also the highest at 140,701. Homeowners who filed an appeal in 2017 should be coming off their three-year valuation freeze in 2020.
Number of Parcels, 2018
This heat maps shows the raw number of parcels in each county and is a good illustration of the density around metro Atlanta. This density is actually even more extreme but the color shading cohorts used here (on an increasing scale) attempt to make each color equally represented. This makes the overall map more evenly colorful instead of a single pop of color around metro Atlanta.
These are technically called “choropleth maps” since they use actual geographic regions (here, counties) to display the data and not uniform squares (other other shapes) overlaid on a geographic map. We prefer “heat maps”.
Notes: We used data from the Georgia Department of Revenue to put together these property tax appeal statistics. This data was submitted to the Georgia Department of Revenue by tax assessors from all 159 Georgia counties. Metro Atlanta is defined (by Hallock Law LLC) as 15 counties: Fulton, DeKalb, Gwinnett, Cobb, Forsyth, Cherokee, Fayette, Clayton, Henry, Bartow, Hall, Paulding, Douglas, Rockdale, and Coweta. While this definition seems expansive, it is actually much smaller than the Atlanta metropolitan statistical area (MSA) definition provided by the U.S. Census Bureau, which includes 29 counties. Did you know that Georgia has the second most number of counties (159) of any state? Texas is first with 254.
About the Author
Bryan Hallock, founding partner, escaped his data analytics job of 15 years at Fidelity Investments to pursue a new career as a small business owner. He earned his J.D. and M.B.A. from Georgia State University but will always be a Ramblin’ Wreck from Georgia Tech.
Bryan Hallock, Founding Partner | Property Tax Attorney. Photo by Katie Weeks Photo LLC