"Buying a Home in Kansas: How Do I Check the County's Value on the Home I Just Bought, and Can I Still Appeal It?"

The county appraiser's envelope went out in late February, addressed to the person who owned your Kansas home on January 1. By the time you closed in June, the seller had opened it, read it, and recycled it, along with the thirty days it gave them to question the number inside. The number itself stayed with the home. It is on the county's website tonight, and it is the figure your escrow payment is built on.

You can look up the county's appraised value on your Kansas home through the county appraiser's property search, and if you disagree with it, you can still appeal it after closing. The spring notice-of-value appeal closes 30 days after the notice is mailed. A payment under protest, filed with the county treasurer, stays open until December 20, or until January 31 when your escrow account pays the tax bill.

I'm Jeff Moran, a mortgage broker in Bluffton, South Carolina, originating since 1996, NMLS #483943, through C2 Financial Corporation, licensed in fifteen states, including Kansas. The property tax inside a Kansas mortgage payment is set by the county and only collected by your lender, so it is worth knowing how to check it yourself.

How do I find the county's appraised value on my Kansas home?

Every county appraiser in Kansas publishes it, and you do not need an account or a notice in hand to see it. Johnson County's property data page has a land records search you can run by address. Douglas County's property search does the same for Lawrence, and Sedgwick County's appraiser runs its own search by address or parcel number.

You will see two numbers on the record. The appraised value is the county's opinion of what the home was worth on January 1 of that year, the date K.S.A. 79-1455 fixes for every appraisal. The assessed value is the slice the tax is figured on. Sedgwick County's treasurer explains that a home in Kansas is assessed at 11.5 percent of its appraised value. The mill levy, which is the local tax rate in dollars per $1,000 of assessed value, is applied to that smaller figure. The appraised value is the one to check, because it is the only one you can argue with.

Once you have the figure, you can ask the appraiser's office for the paperwork behind it. The state's guide to valuation appeals says your county appraiser can give you a comparable sales sheet, showing the homes it measured yours against. It can also give you an inventory contents sheet listing what it believes about your home: square footage, bathrooms, basement finish, condition, year built. You walked through that home with an inspector a few months ago. If the county has a finished basement where you have a concrete floor, you are holding the kind of evidence an appeal is built on.

The spring notice went to the seller

Kansas runs its property value calendar early in the year, before most clients have closed. Under K.S.A. 79-1460, the county appraiser mails a notice of the classification and appraised value of every parcel on or before March 1, to the taxpayer's last known address.

K.S.A. 79-1448 gives the taxpayer 30 days from the date the notice was mailed to ask the county appraiser for an informal meeting. The same statute tells the appraiser to hold those meetings by May 15 and give a final answer by May 20. Johnson County takes that request through its online appeal portal or on the back of the notice.

So if you closed in June, that whole sequence happened to the seller. The notice went to their mailbox, the 30 days ran on their calendar, and the May 20 decision date passed while you were still packing. If you closed early enough that the March notice came to you, the spring route is yours and the 30-day clock is the one to watch.

A property's value can be appealed only once in a tax year, and the rule follows the home, whoever owns it. Sedgwick County's appraiser says there are two ways to appeal, and a value can be appealed once per tax year. The same county says a spring appeal that is filed and then abandoned forfeits the right to protest the value for that year. You can call the appraiser's office and ask whether anything was filed on your parcel in the spring, and that tells you which calendar you are on.

Can I appeal the county's value after I buy a home in Kansas?

Yes. Kansas keeps a second route open at tax time.

It is called a payment under protest. K.S.A. 79-2005 lets a taxpayer who disagrees with the value protest the payment of the tax by filing a written statement with the county treasurer, on a form the treasurer provides. The protest is filed when the tax is paid, or by December 20 if any part of the tax was paid before then. If an escrow or tax service agent paid at least half of the tax by December 20, the statute moves the deadline to January 31 of the following year.

Douglas County's treasurer takes the completed application by email, and says the appraiser then schedules an informal meeting by phone or in person. You and the appraiser's office meet, you show your evidence, and the office issues a decision. If you disagree with that decision, the Department of Revenue's payment-under-protest guide gives you 30 days from its mailing to take it to the Kansas Board of Tax Appeals, where a single-family home can use the small claims division.

The same Douglas County page says you cannot pay under protest if an appeal was already filed on the same property for the same tax year. It also says a protest filed with the first-half payment cannot be repeated with the second half. There are two different ways to get this done, and you can only choose one.

Your payment under protest deadline, by who pays the bill

The treasurer mails the tax statement before December 15 under K.S.A. 79-2001. Under K.S.A. 79-2004 you can pay the whole year by December 20, or half by December 20 and the rest by May 10.

1. December 20 if you pay the bill yourself, in full or the first half. The protest goes in with the payment, or by December 20 if you paid earlier.
2. January 31 if a mortgage company, through your escrow account, or a tax service paid at least half of the tax by December 20. Sedgwick County says that when the mortgage company pays directly, the protest can be filed with the treasurer any time after the bills go out and before January 31.
3. May 10 with the second-half payment, if no protest was filed with the first half. Johnson County and Douglas County both list it.

If your Kansas loan has an escrow account, the second date is yours. You did not get the March notice, and your servicer pays the tax bill out of the money collected inside your monthly payment, so you may never handle a bill at all. In December you can call your servicer and ask for the date it paid the county and the amount, because the extension depends on at least half of the tax having been paid by December 20.

The fall protest is filed with the treasurer. The state's protest guide describes the treasurer forwarding the form to the appraiser, who then contacts you to set the meeting. The spring appeal starts in the appraiser's office instead, so it is worth confirming the counter before you hand the form over.

The refund, and how it reaches your escrow account

A successful protest changes a bill that has already been paid, so the county owes you the difference. Douglas County's property search page says a reduction shows up on the second-half bill, or as a refund if the year was paid in full.

If your servicer paid the bill, the refund or the smaller second-half bill lands in the escrow account rather than in your checking account. The annual analysis is covered in how an escrow account collects for taxes and insurance. The servicer sizes next year's monthly escrow from the bills it actually paid this year, so a lower county value works its way into the payment through that analysis. The figure your lender projects for property taxes on a purchase and the figure the county actually bills are two different numbers, and the escrow account is where the gap shows up as a shortage.

Mistakes that cost a new Kansas owner the appeal

Waiting for a notice that went to the seller. The March notice is addressed to whoever owned the home on January 1. If that was not you, the fall route is the one to plan around.

Reading the purchase price as the county's value. The county's figure is as of January 1 and was set from sales before that date. Your own purchase becomes one of the sales the state can see, because K.S.A. 79-1437c sends a sales validation questionnaire to the register of deeds with your deed. So your price is evidence for next year's notice, and this year's value still needs its own check.

Protesting with an opinion instead of evidence. An error on the inventory sheet, a sale the county should have weighed, or a photo of the basement is what moves the number.

Forgetting the rest of the statement. In Kansas the same tax statement can also carry special assessment installments that land inside the escrowed payment. A value appeal does not touch those, so please read the whole statement before deciding which number is the problem.

An illustration, so the shape is clear

Numbers below are made up to show the mechanism. The mill levy and the values are invented, and nothing here is a Kansas average or a quote.

A client closes on a home in Overland Park in June and finds the county carries it at $340,000. The county's inventory sheet lists a finished basement that is bare concrete. She files a payment under protest in her servicer's January 31 window, and the appraiser's office agrees on $320,000.

Before the protest
  County appraised value                    $340,000
  Assessed value at 11.5 percent             $39,100
  Invented mill levy                              125
                                              -------
  General property tax for the year           $4,888

After the protest
  County appraised value                    $320,000
  Assessed value at 11.5 percent             $36,800
  Invented mill levy                              125
                                              -------
  General property tax for the year           $4,600

Difference for the year                         $288
Spread across the escrow payment, per month      $24

Five minutes on the county's site and a look at the inventory sheet tell you whether the county's number is close. If it is not, the January 31 date lets you question it, even though the notice never came to you.

Next steps in Kansas

If you are buying in Kansas, the county's appraised value of the home is public before you write the offer, and the tax line in your payment should be built from that figure rather than from a listing's estimate. Run your numbers and you will see rates for your scenario, your debt ratio and closing costs priced for Kansas rather than a national average. No credit pull, no account, nobody calls you.

If you want a letter a seller will take seriously, a Kansas pre-approval is where the income, debts and credit get reviewed properly. The Kansas mortgage page covers what is unusual about a closing here, and the Kansas City, Kansas guide walks through Johnson County and the counties around it. The same county value also feeds the Kansas Homestead Refund's value cap, if that program fits your household.

If you want to talk it through, you are welcome to call me, and we can go over how the county's value runs through your payment and your escrow account.

Nothing here is a loan approval, a denial, a commitment to lend, or tax or legal advice. The county appraiser sets the value, and the Kansas Board of Tax Appeals decides a contested one.

Common questions

How do I find out what the county appraised my home for in Kansas?

You can open the county appraiser's property search and look up the address. Johnson County's land records search, Sedgwick County's appraiser search and Douglas County's property search all show the current appraised value and the assessed value without an account. The appraised value is the county's opinion of market value as of January 1 under K.S.A. 79-1455.

Can I appeal my Kansas property value after I buy the home?

Yes. The spring appeal under K.S.A. 79-1448 runs 30 days from the mailing of the notice of value, which usually goes to the seller. The second route is a payment under protest under K.S.A. 79-2005, which you file with the county treasurer. You file it when you pay the tax, or by December 20 if you paid earlier. If an escrow or tax service agent paid at least half by December 20, you have until January 31 of the following year.

What is the deadline for a payment under protest in Kansas if my mortgage company pays my taxes?

January 31 of the year after the tax year, as long as the escrow or tax service agent paid at least half of the tax by December 20. That is the clause in K.S.A. 79-2005, and Johnson, Sedgwick and Douglas counties each list the January 31 date on their appeal pages. The protest form is filed with the county treasurer.

Can I file both a notice of value appeal and a payment under protest in Kansas?

No. A property's value can be appealed once per tax year. Douglas County's treasurer says a payment under protest is not available if an appeal was already filed on the same property for the same tax year. A protest filed with the first-half payment also cannot be repeated with the second half. Sedgwick County adds that a spring appeal filed and then abandoned forfeits the right to protest the value for that year.

Does a successful Kansas property value appeal lower my mortgage payment?

It lowers the tax bill, and the payment follows through the escrow account. The county issues a credit on the second-half bill or a refund if the year was paid in full. If a servicer paid the bill, that money goes to the escrow account, and the servicer's annual escrow analysis sets next year's monthly escrow from the bills it actually paid. Only the escrow portion of the payment moves, while the principal and interest stay the same.