News release from the Allen County Assessor’s office:
Assessor to Offer New Online Property Search Service
“COMPS” set to debut this week
(July 9, 2012) — The Allen County Assessor’s Office, GIS Department, and Atos Origin have worked together to develop a new online service that will allow taxpayers and other interested parties to search for and view the sales that were used to trend their property for the respective assessment date.
The service is called “COMPS” — Comparable Online Multiple Property Search — and is set to debut the week of July 9. It will be found on the Assessor’s homepage through the County’s website — www.allencounty.us.
With the COMPS service, every sale that was used in the ratio study can be displayed on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis so taxpayers know exactly how their annual adjustment factor was calculated.
COMPS also gives taxpayers the ability to search for sales that were not used in the annual ratio study. They can view such items as foreclosures, short sales and sheriff sales. This allows the taxpayer to see the balance of valid transactions versus invalid sales in their neighborhood.
Stacey O’Day, Allen County Assessor, believes COMPS will provide many benefits, including transparency. “Every sale that took place in the county can be viewed,” O’Day said, “not only those that were used in the ratio study, but also sales that were deemed invalid by the county.”
O’Day also noted that taxpayers can save a trip to her office to find out what sales were used to determine their value. “A simple search for their property provides their neighborhood or market area and the exact sales used to determine their assessed value,” she said.