City Assessor

Real estate is a valuable commodity. If you don’t own any, you want the value to be low so you can purchase your first home at a bargain rate. If you do own property, you want the value to rise so you can make a profit on your investment. Either way, one thing’s for sure: if you own it, you must pay taxes on it.

Nobody likes that fact, but it’s all part of the work of a City Assessor. City Assessors spend their days assessing the value of properties all over town. The figure they come up with is then used as part of the equation to figure out how much the taxes on a particular property will be.

Part of your job as a City Assessor takes you into the field, where you make note of changes to structures, such as additions or outbuildings. Sometimes this requires going into the house to update details like the number of rooms, square footage, and use of the space.

When you’re not driving from address to address, you’re back in your office crunching numbers. Every hotel, golf course, house, coffee shop, and vacant piece of land within the city limits gets your review every three years (on average). That doesn’t mean you go to each place, but you review the information, consider the current market, look at similar property values, evaluate replacement cost, and judge the property’s income potential before you make an educated estimate about the property and building value.