Homeowners in Guilford County: here’s WHY — and HOW — to challenge your 2026 property tax reassessment, particularly if you bought your home prior to the 2022 assessment.
First, the WHY.
Guilford County’s housing market has been the target of corporate investors.
Those corporate investors bought up thousands of homes, making cash deals for more than the asking price. That put pressure on non-corporate homebuyers (I.e., the rest of us) to offer more-than-asking-price for homes, too.
Particularly in 2021 — when these corporations were literally buying several houses EACH DAY — the real-estate market was so hot that the Guilford Regional Realtors Association even issued a press release saying they’d “never seen homes sell this fast.”
And so, in 2022, when the last property reassessment was done in Guilford County, there had been ***just enough*** above-market purchases to prompt a “mandatory advancement” (under N.C.G.S. 105-286). That meant Guilford County had to reassess the property again in 2026 instead of waiting until the next scheduled one in 2030.
*** And when I write “just enough,” I mean it:
IF the NC Department of Revenue Sales Assessment Ratio Study yields a value between 0.85 and 1.15,
THEN no early reassessment would have been required. BUT after the 2022 assessment, the NCDOR calculated Guilford County’s ratio to be 0.8495, or just 0.005 off. SO state law mandated reassessment by January 1 of the third year following NCDOR notification, and that’s now, 2026.
According to Guilford County Tax Director Ben Chavis (as reported by WFDD — all links below), the average 2026 reassessment is expected between 40 and 45% higher.
But, as I’ve found, the corporate-houses reassessment — at least those purchased at above-market values prior to the 2022 reassessment — are significantly lower.
So, for example, in my neighborhood, “First Key Homes” bought homes in 2021. In the 2022 reassessment, those corporate-owned homes had an average reassessment that was 8.8% LOWER than the purchase price (further evidence of overpayment from the Guilford County Tax Department itself). By comparison, for the non-corporate-owned homes purchased in 2021 by my neighbors, their average reassessment in 2022 was 0.3% HIGHER than the purchase price (suggesting my neighbors had purchased their homes at actual, not inflated, market values).
Now, in 2026, compared to the 2022 valuation, the corporate-homes reassessment in my neighborhood is up 14%. But for my neighbors who also bought homes in 2021, their 2026 average reassessment is more than double the corporate rate increase, at 29.2%. This rate difference means, in some cases, tens of thousands of dollars of valuation, and so a difference of hundreds or thousands of dollars in annual property taxes.
Why is that? I don’t know. It seems IF the properties I’m comparing — all of which were bought in 2021, all in my neighborhood — were all assessed properly in 2022, THEN they should all be changing by about the same amount in 2026 (barring any major investments, such as new roofs, remodels, etc.).
My home, which I purchased only a year before, in 2020, was reassessed in 2022 at 0.4% higher. But now, driven by the higher-than-market purchases, it’s been reassessed in 2026 at 44.1% higher than it was in 2022.
That’s absurd. My house should not be worth that much money.
And as evidence for my claim, my neighbors who bought homes between 2024-2026 are — on average — getting reassessments that are 0.3% LOWER than their purchase price. In other words, yes, they paid too much, and even the Guilford County Tax Department believes their properties aren’t worth as much as they paid for it.
So that’s the WHY to challenge your 2026 property tax reassessment in Guilford County: something is amiss with how these corporate-owned homes have been assessed, and it was their higher-than-market-price purchases — thousands of them — that drove up prices for the rest of us.
Now for the HOW.
Step 0.
To review your property details for accuracy and view recent sales, do NOT go to nc-guilford-citizen.comper.info — the link given on the Guilford County Tax Department 2026 assessment notice — because it DOES NOT WORK (did it ever work? I don’t know).
Step 1.
Go INSTEAD to https://lrcpwa.ncptscloud.com/guilford/SearchProperty.aspx and type in your property information (I like using house number and street name).
Step 2.
Make sure all the information about your property is correct (including things like number of floors — my 2-story home is listed as having 2.19 stories). Make a note of anything that is wrong.
Step 3.
As part of checking if anything is wrong, compare the “Total Appraised Value” (in the “Parcel” tab) with the number given as “Assessed Value” in the paper notice you received. Those values should match.
Step 4.
Investigate the “Tax Bill” tab to see what the prior valuation was. Check both the 2022 bill (the last time the property was reassessed) and the most recent (2025) bill. Look for the amount listed with “Total Assessed Value” (after you open the bills). If the Total Assessed Value is higher in the 2025 bill compared to the 2022 bill (yes, it can happen), make a note of it, too, because that may be something wrong, too, particularly if you’ve owned the property prior to 2022.
Step 5.
Investigate the “Sales” tab to see what properties have sold in your neighborhood since you bought your home. Investigate every single one of those homes listed in the “Sales” tab by clicking the linked REID numbers for each one. You’re looking for non-human owners (for example, “FKH SFR PROPCO D LP” and “RM1 SFR PropCo A LP” both doing business as “First Key Homes” own homes in my neighborhood and are listed as “Property Owner” after clicking the linked REID number). Make a note of those corporate-owned homes, check the “Total Appraised Value” for each one in the “Parcel” tab against the 2025 and 2022 bills found in the “Tax Bill” tab (in other words, essentially repeat steps 3 and 4 for the corporate-owned homes but, obviously, without having the paper copy for comparison).
Step 6.
Particularly if you owned your home prior to the 2022 reassessment, and for any corporate owners who also owned their property since before the 2022 assessment, calculate the percentage increase of your own tax reassessment (using the figures from Steps 3 and 4) and calculate the percentage increase (or decrease!) of the tax reassessment of any company-owned properties (i.e., do it for those corporate owners, if any, that you found in Step 5).
Step 7.
Decide whether to file an appeal.
If anything is wrong (Steps 2, 3 and/or 4), file an appeal.
If your percentage increase in tax reassessment is more than that of any corporate owners in your neighborhood (step 6, especially for those corporate owners who purchased prior to the 2022 reassessment), file an appeal.
As necessary, Step 8.
To file an appeal, visit
https://appeals.spatialest.com/nc-guilford
and type in your address. Just go straight to the “File an Appeal” button and follow the step-by-step guide. Don’t bother with the “Visit Comper” button which says you can “compare your property with similar properties that have recently sold.” That’s because it doesn’t work very well. You’ll likely have to toggle values at the top just to get any comparable properties listed at all, and it appears from the pre-selected values at the top that the only properties being considered for the 2026 reassessment are those that sold between 1/1/2024 and 12/31/2025, which is part of the the aforementioned inflated market… with my neighbors who bought during that time having 2026 tax re-assessments that went down from their purchase price (in other words, “purchase price” is a lousy metric for assessing value when corporate investors have targeted your county, particularly when their goal may be exactly to drive up purchase price in order to drive up their future profits). So I used as comparable houses those purchased around the same time as mine, for about the same price per square foot (yes, that meant some additional research into my neighbors’ properties — step 5, above — and more calculations).
*-*-*-*-*
Finally, an example of PART OF AN appeal… given SOME of my answers to the above steps (this goes in the tiny window after you click the “other” checkbox for reasons behind your appeal):
Guilford County is only experiencing this “Mandatory Advancement” (under N.C.G.S. 105-286) because of the thousands of homes that were purchased by companies at above-market prices. Indeed, those purchases pushed the market just high enough to trigger the “Mandatory Advancement” clause in the law back in 2023.
As example of this above-market-purchase-price problem, the homes in our neighborhood purchased by companies and listed in the “Sales” category on the “Guilford County Real Property Data” site were purchased in 2021 but had their tax assessment go DOWN in 2022 an average of 8.8% from the purchase price. Now, in 2026, their assessed value has only gone up an average of 14% since 2022 (and still only 3.9% above the 2021 purchase price).
[[[And as Evidence, I uploaded my Spreadsheet where these calculations are shown]]
*-*-*-*-* Spreadsheet — the data I gathered regarding the 2 companies that purchased homes in my neighborhood
https://docs.google.com/…/1i4VR0SNClOfXvxfwacb4…/edit…
You can BUILD YOUR OWN spreadsheet using this one as a template (for step 5), though this one has EVERY property owned by these two companies, so it is a lot more data than you’ll need to compile for the homes in your neighborhood.
*-*-*-*-* Appreciate this reporting?
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*-*-*-*-* References
* Guilford County Realtors press release “never seen homes sell this fast”
* 2023 letter from North Carolina Department of Revenue to Guilford County Tax Department saying a reappraisal would be required for 2026.
https://www.guilfordcountync.gov/sales-assessment…/open
* Property values up by an average of 40-45% according to Guilford County Tax Director
Reporting by WFDD:
“Guilford County property values could increase by more than 40%, officials say“
https://www.wfdd.org/…/guilford-county-property-values…
*-*-*-*-* Some nitty gritty details of interest
* First Key Homes, which has bought more than 1400 homes in Guilford County (including in my neighborhood) is owned by Cerebus, a company co-founded by Stephen Feinberg. He stepped away from his role there in 2025 to became Deputy Secretary of Defense, but still has continuing ties to his company’s government contracts.
Reporting by ProPublica on those continuing ties:
“Documents Reveal a Web of Financial Ties Between Trump Officials and the Industries They Help Regulate”
https://www.propublica.org/…/trump-administration…
* Names of companies I’ve discovered doing business as “First Key Homes” and the numbers of homes they own in Guilford County
FKH SFR Propco A — 139 Properties
FKH SFR Propco B-HLD — 45 properties
FKH SFR C1 — 55 properties
FKH SFR C2 — 73 properties
FKH SFR PROPCO D — 85 properties
FKH SFR PROPCO G — 60 properties
FKH SFR PROPCO H — 95 properties
FKH SFR PropCo I — 65 properties
FKH SFR PropCo J — 47 properties
FKH SFR PropCo K — 52 properties
FKH SFR M — 2 properties
FKH SFR N — 27 properties
FKH SFR P — 595 properties
FKH SFR Q — 16 properties
IDF1 SFR Propco A — 1 property
RM1 SFR PROPCO A LP — 49 properties
RM1 SFR Propco B — 10 properties
* “2,911” — number of homes so far identified as corporate-owned single-family residential properties as by Guilford County Tax Director Ben Chavis and Register of Deeds Jeff Thigpen.
Reporting by RhinoTimes:
“Data Hunt Begins On Corporate Landlords Buying Up Guilford County Homes”
https://www.rhinotimes.com/…/data-hunt-begins-on…
* Some believe the corporations are simply engaged in a buy-to-rent investment — as this NPR article suggests:
https://www.npr.org/…/private-equity-corporate-landlords
* But it doesn’t matter — not one bit — if the corporate strategy was buy-to-rent OR ALSO was to drive up property values and then sell off the properties. Indeed, even if the corporate owners were engaged in a buy-to-rent strategy, they might shift strategies. After all, the reassessment values in 2026 are so high — that by NOT challenging them — the companies can try to sell the homes at a substantial profit (if not this year, then in years soon to come). For example, looking at the 2 subdivisions of “First Key Homes” that bought property in my neighborhood — “RM1 SFR PropCo A LP” and “FKH SFR PROPCO D LP” — those two divisions overall purchased 144 properties in 2021 at a cost of $36,189,900. Their property was assessed by the Guilford County Tax Department in 2022 as being valued about $3 million less than the purchase price, ad $33,587,500. But the reassessment in 2026 totals to $46,746,000, a 29.2% increase over the purchase price in 5 years.
P.S. Don’t you just love public records? I do!
None of this would be possible without them.