New Jersey has the highest property tax bills in America and a clean mechanical test.
We check individual addresses here. No cap, and the Chapter 123 ratio gives a straightforward arithmetic test of whether your assessment is out of line. The state publishes its own appeal data: 15,717 appeals in 2025 with $2.06 billion of reductions granted.
So New Jersey gives you a ground that runs on published assessed values rather than on sale prices. You're not showing what your house would sell for. You're showing that homes genuinely like yours are assessed lower than yours is, using numbers the county already publishes.
Now that matters more than it sounds, because it means a state keeping sale prices private doesn't stop you. Illinois, Texas, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Kansas, Massachusetts and DC all have some version of it, and honestly it's usually the stronger argument even where sale prices are public.
April 1 in most towns. January 15 in Burlington, Gloucester and Monmouth, which is two and a half months earlier than the date most guides quote. We have flagged this one to re-verify, so check it against your own notice or your county's site before you rely on it.
Miss it and you generally wait a year, so honestly the date matters more than the paperwork does.
And wherever you are, the single most useful thing you can do today is go find your assessment notice and read the date printed on it. That's what starts your clock, it's usually a much shorter window than people expect, and there's no getting it back once it's gone.
Every municipality in New Jersey, all 564 of them, from one statewide record. The state decides these on arithmetic rather than opinion, so we can tell you the exact dollar figure your home has to come in under before a county board is required to cut your assessment. We also tell you when filing would RAISE it, which happens in New Jersey and nowhere else we cover.
So type your address into our free check and we'll read the county's own records, work out whether the evidence actually supports an appeal, and tell you straight. Most people who use it get told not to bother, which is the point.
Check your New Jersey home, free
Also, there's one move that has nothing to do with appealing and that a lot of people miss entirely. Most states take exemptions off your bill before any of the value arithmetic happens, starting with a homestead exemption if you actually live in the house, and usually extra ones for owners over 65, for veterans, and for people with disabilities. They're often worth more than an appeal win, they carry forward year after year rather than needing to be re-won, and plenty of people who qualify have never filed for them. Your county assessor's website lists what's available where you live, and it costs nothing to look.
We screened all fifty states and DC on the same two questions. Does winning a lower market value actually lower your bill, or is there a cap sitting in between? And can the evidence even be assembled from public records?
This comes from our own fifty-state screen, which checked each state's cap structure, whether sale prices are public, whether an assessment-based argument exists, and how many appeals actually get filed. Where we quote an appeal count it came from the state or county that published it. If you spot an error, please write to hello@propertytaxbuddy.com and we'll correct it and say what changed.