How can I find the true assessment of a house?

[Chicago48]

House on the east side. I don't want to go through a realtor site. Is there a department I can write in Detroit that will give me the assessed value?

[gvidas]

Define "true assessment."

How much a bank will let you mortgage it for? Hire an assessor.

How much it's worth? Ask the person who owns it how much they'll sell it to you for. Or ask yourself how much you'll pay for it. The free market value of unique objects is a transient thing.

How much the taxable value is? WDWOT is usually correct, but at the bottom of the detailed info they link you to the city of Detroit Property and Land search page, which is about as accurate as any other info in our fair city.

[Chicago48]

Define "true assessment."

How much a bank will let you mortgage it for? Hire an assessor.

How much it's worth? Ask the person who owns it how much they'll sell it to you for. Or ask yourself how much you'll pay for it. The free market value of unique objects is a transient thing.

How much the taxable value is? WDWOT is usually correct, but at the bottom of the detailed info they link you to the city of Detroit Property and Land search page, which is about as accurate as any other info in our fair city.

I can't ask the owner, he gets defensive [[a relative).
I can't go to an assessor because I'm out of state and don't want to pay.
Will the Detroit Property Assessor have that information for the public?

[gvidas]

The 'assessed value' of a property for tax purposes is almost entirely separate from its market value. They use the same words and the same unit of measure, but nobody anywhere is going to buy a house based on its property tax assessment.

A real estate assessor [[in a mortgage / purchase context) is going to walk through the property examining its condition, size, construction methods, etc, and check for glaring problems. They're then going to come up with about half a dozen recently sold properties in the neighborhood and compare.

In broad strokes, you can do this yourself. Trulia, Zillow, Redfin, etc all allow you to search only for recently sold properties. At the end, tho, all you'll have is a number in your head of what you think that house is worth. Finding someone to pay that is whole 'nother deal.

[Armin]

you don't "hire an assessor". you would hire an appraiser. an assessor would be assessing the taxable value for a local municipality. an appraiser would appraise the current market value based on a comparison of similar square footage sales within a certain radius within the past year or so. I am in the mortgage industry. Zillow, Trulia and Redfin are notoriously inaccurate, but sometimes might be the only tools out there without an actual appraisal being done.

[Hamtragedy]

Define "true assessment."

How much a bank will let you mortgage it for? Hire an assessor.

How much it's worth? Ask the person who owns it how much they'll sell it to you for. Or ask yourself how much you'll pay for it. The free market value of unique objects is a transient thing.

How much the taxable value is? WDWOT is usually correct, but at the bottom of the detailed info they link you to the city of Detroit Property and Land search page, which is about as accurate as any other info in our fair city.

That website appears dead-on for current taxable value, and also appears relatively up to date