Oh, I see that house down the street is for sale!  What's the list price? 

They are asking $400,000 for the house.

What is the tax assessment of the property?

Why?

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If you want to know the tax assessed value of the house to understand how much an owner of the property pays in real estate taxes - great!  Let's go take a look at the tax assessment.

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If you want to know the tax assessed value of the house to evaluate whether the seller's asking price for their home is reasonable -- you likely aren't looking in the right places for indicators of market value.

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Tax assessed values are actually intended to be a good indicator of market value, as the City and County want to be taxing you on the basis of the actual market value of your property... but... oftentimes, the tax assessed value of properties in this area range from low to very low.

Part of that is due to timing.  Today's tax assessed values may be based on sales data from 12 to 18 to 24 months ago due to the time intensive process of analyzing property values and updating tax assessed values.

The median sales price is currently increasing quickly, at a rate of 10% to 12% per year.  Thus, when market values are quickly increasing and tax assessed values are based on 12 to 24 month old data, you are likely to see a more significant difference between tax assessments and market values.

So, it's fine to look at the tax assessment of a property, but I wouldn't put too much confidence in thinking that it is an indicator of the present market value of the property.