NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — Nashville residents will soon learn how much their property values have changed since 2021.
The city is wrapping up its assessment of all residential, industrial, and commercial properties, which it conducts on a four-year cycle. Tennessee law requires reappraisals at least once every six years.
This spring, city officials have been considering shifting to an even shorter cycle, which would make Davidson County one of the first in Tennessee to do so.
"For fast-growing cities like Nashville, a four-year reappraisal cycle is too long to get the data that's needed," said Delishia Porterfield, Metro Council Member At Large and the Council's budget and finance chair.
The Metro Council passed a resolution supporting this idea, which Porterfield said would help the city nail down a more accurate tax rate and annual budget, and ease the "sticker shock" homeowners experience when property values increase dramatically between assessment periods. In 2017, Nashville properties saw an average increase of 37% from 2013 values. Four years later, they jumped another 34%.
"The cost of eggs today is not the cost of eggs last year, so the amount of money that it costs our city now is not the exact amount of money it cost to run our city last year," Porterfield said.
Michelle Becker — who has owned her home in the Hillsboro-West End neighborhood for 30 years and works as a realtor — sees the benefit of more frequent assessments.
"If you think about it, maybe your parents had a house and their property values didn't change a lot over four or five or 10 years," Michelle Becker said. "So, having a reappraisal every four years made sense. That was a really adequate time gap. I do think having it a little more often does capture the rate at which things are changing."
Property assessments determine how much homeowners pay in property taxes, which fund essential city services.
"When we're talking about people's roads being paved, or talking about paying for our public school system, or our libraries, or our firefighters and our police, all of those things are coming from our tax dollars," Porterfield said.
According to the Mayor's Office, the state approved the plan on Monday. This means a three-year cycle will start on July 1 with a review of properties in the county and updating records. A more frequent, every-other-year reappraisal could start after that.
Property owners of Davidson County's 289,784 parcels should receive their 2025 assessment notifications in April, reflecting updated appraised values. Tax bills, either higher or lower, depending on how a property's value changed relative to the median increase, will follow a few months later.
It's important to note, state law requires that the revenue collected by a county remain the same after a reappraisal, even if property values across the board go up or down.
Are you wondering how the new property assessment cycle could affect your home value? Watch our detailed breakdown of the proposal and what it means for Nashville homeowners in our video report. Have questions about your property assessment? Email hannah.mcdonald@newschannel5.com.
This story was reported by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
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-Lelan Statom
