Property tax · decision engine
Is your home over-assessed?
Change a detail and the verdict changes with it. Most homeowners will read “your assessment looks fair” — that is the point. A tool that talks you out of filing is the one to believe when it tells you to file.
- rules cited
- no AI arithmetic
- nothing stored
- free, no signup
New Jersey needs your municipality's Director's Ratio before any appeal advice is honest.
The 8 homes most like yours put a fair assessment near $555,601. Your notice says $636,163. That is a measurement, not an amount you can recover.
Not calculable. In New Jersey the recoverable amount is set by statute, not by the comparables, and the statutory input is missing.
High. The comparables are numerous, close together, and recent — the kind of evidence a board takes seriously.
Bergen County's deadline is 1 April 2027 — 194 days away.
That is the date the Bergen County Board of Taxation must have your petition, not the date you post it. The Bergen County Board of Taxation must have your petition in hand by the deadline. Mailing it that day is not enough — a postmark does not count, and a petition that arrives late is dismissed without a hearing.
Caution
New Jersey decides appeals on a statutory ratio test this check cannot run yet.
Nothing below is filing guidance. The comparables arithmetic is sound; the rule that converts it into relief needs data Bracketsight does not have.
Why
- No Director's Ratio has been encoded for any Bergen County municipality. The Division of Taxation's Chapter 123 table has not been fetched from a primary source, and FairParcel does not invent ratios. Until it is, no Bergen County result can be presented as filing guidance.
- New Jersey decides appeals on Chapter 123: relief depends on where your assessment-to-value ratio falls against your municipality's average ratio, not on the gap against comparable homes. N.J.S.A. 54:1-35a, 54:3-22(c) and 54:51A-6 ("Chapter 123"), as set out in the NJ Assessors Handbook §§1105.19–1105.20
- For the record, comparable homes put a fair assessment near $555,601 against your $636,163 — a $80,562 difference. That figure is not a basis for filing here, and the county board is not permitted to act on it.
- Re-fetch the table from https://www.state.nj.us/treasury/taxation/lpt/chapter123.shtml. It is republished every 1 April.
Compares your assessment against recent sales of similar homes.
Loads that home's details below. Change any of them to describe your own.
Only you see this. It labels your parcel on the map.
Most homes on this sheet are 900–4,000 sqft.
Bedrooms as the county records them.
Half baths count as a half.
From your notice or the county parcel record.
The year the county has on file.
The assessed value printed on your notice — not what you think it would sell for.
Single-family, detached or attached.
A unit in a shared building.
A small multi-family building.
0 of 7 details — the answer below uses the sample parcel's details until you change them
The verdict updates as you type. Nothing you enter is uploaded, logged, or stored — the whole calculation runs in this browser tab.
Each additional $10,000 of your assessed value costs you $230 a year in tax.
Drag it to find where your case stops being worth filing — the verdict below moves with it. Ratio is what decides the appeal; this is what it costs you.
The Comp Map
Your parcel, drawn in the middle of the 8 homes the filters kept. Green lots argue your assessment is too high; plain lots argue it is about right.
| Lot | Address | Living area | Year built | Assessed value | Assessed-to-sale ratio | Which way it argues |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Subject | 48 Alder Court | 1,850 square feet | 1962 | $636,163 | ratio 1.115 | Your home — the parcel being checked. |
| Lot 01 | 11 Quarry Street | 1,845 square feet | 1964 | $557,563 | ratio 0.978 | Assessed at a lower ratio than yours — argues your assessment is too high. |
| Lot 02 | 20 Cedar Row | 1,795 square feet | 1962 | $535,635 | ratio 0.972 | Assessed at a lower ratio than yours — argues your assessment is too high. |
| Lot 03 | 19 Birchwood Lane | 1,875 square feet | 1960 | $568,547 | ratio 0.975 | Assessed at a lower ratio than yours — argues your assessment is too high. |
| Lot 04 | 33 Alder Court | 1,810 square feet | 1963 | $540,756 | ratio 0.970 | Assessed at a lower ratio than yours — argues your assessment is too high. |
| Lot 05 | 12 Alder Court | 1,760 square feet | 1958 | $507,602 | ratio 0.955 | Assessed at a lower ratio than yours — argues your assessment is too high. |
| Lot 06 | 37 Birchwood Lane | 1,725 square feet | 1959 | $504,473 | ratio 0.962 | Assessed at a lower ratio than yours — argues your assessment is too high. |
| Lot 07 | 16 Alder Court | 1,930 square feet | 1961 | $600,655 | ratio 0.988 | Assessed at a lower ratio than yours — argues your assessment is too high. |
| Lot 08 | 26 Cedar Row | 1,905 square feet | 1965 | $586,725 | ratio 0.984 | Assessed at a lower ratio than yours — argues your assessment is too high. |
See the comparables table and Bergen County's filing rules →
Synthetic data
SYNTHETIC DEMO DATA — fictional parcels in a fictional neighborhood. Not real county records. For demonstrating FairParcel end-to-end only. Real parcel records land county by county; the statistics are the production engine either way.
The workings
2 counties encoded
How the check works
Four steps, all arithmetic. No model, no estimate, no AI anywhere near a number — the same median-ratio statistics an assessor uses, run in your browser.
Step 01
You describe your home
Living area, beds, baths, lot, year built, and the assessed value printed on your notice.
Step 02
We pick the comparables
Same kind of property, same neighbourhood, within ±20% of your size, assessed or sold inside your county's evidence window. Every rejection shows its reason.
Step 03
Statistics, not opinion
The median assessment ratio of those homes implies what yours should be assessed at. The gap between that and your notice is the case.
Step 04
An honest verdict
Strong case, worth filing, or not worth it — with the filing fee, the real deadline, and how much the evidence is actually worth.
County playbooks
Every county has its own deadline, fee, forms and evidence standard, and getting one wrong costs you the year. Bracketsight encodes each county's rules as versioned, cited data — starting with two, expanding one county at a time. A county page only publishes once its rules are complete.
Cook County, Illinois
| Deadline | About 30 days after your township opens |
|---|---|
| Filing fee | No fee |
| The argument | Uniformity, against comparable assessments |
Bergen County, New Jersey
| Deadline | 1 April, every year |
|---|---|
| Filing fee | $5 to $150 |
| The argument | Market value, against comparable sales |
Why this is free
Contingency services charge 25–50% of your first-year savings, and the evidence they file is largely the analysis on this page. The check and the comparables exhibit stay free. A complete, county-ready appeal packet — filled form, narrative, checklist — is planned as a one-time purchase for people who want the paperwork done too.
Bracketsight is assistance with an appeal you file yourself. It is not a law firm, does not represent you, and does not produce an appraisal. Read the methodology before you rely on a number, and confirm your deadline with the county before you file.
Where to go next
Guides
No guide has been published for this tool yet. The guides index lists what has.
Terms used here
The workings
2 counties encoded · How the verdict is reached → · Which counties are covered → · Every rule and its source →
This is an independent estimate engine. It is not your county assessor, not an appraisal and not legal or tax advice. Deadlines and fees are strict and set locally — confirm both with your county before you rely on them. Nothing you enter leaves your browser.
Pre-launch build. The estimated annual overpayment, and the filing-fee comparison the verdict is gated on, multiply through a per-county property tax rate that has not been verified against a primary source for either county — so treat the dollar figure as illustrative of the method and the ranking, not as what you would recover. Several Cook County values remain unresolved because the Assessor’s site is unreachable from the verification environment, and a New Jersey verdict is withheld entirely when the governing Director’s Ratio is unavailable, which today is every New Jersey municipality. What is verified and what is not is listed on sources.