Travis Bunn

Founder, AppealDesk · Published March 27, 2026 · Updated August 19, 2026

One Third at a Time: How Maryland Phases a Reassessment Into Three Years of Rising Escrow Payments.

Updated August 2026

Picture a homeowner in Anne Arundel County convinced her mortgage servicer has made a mistake. She appealed her assessment in February, won a reduction from the Supervisor of Assessments in April, and watched her escrow payment drop that fall right on schedule. Then the following year, with no new appeal filed and no market event she is aware of, her escrow payment goes up again. It is not a servicer error. It is Maryland's phase-in schedule doing exactly what state law requires it to do, on a value she already fought and partly won. (This is an illustration of the mechanics, not a real customer account.)

Most states either reassess every property every year or leave a value alone until the next cycle. Maryland does neither. The State Department of Assessments and Taxation reassesses one-third of the state's parcels each year on a rotating schedule, then spreads whatever increase it finds across the following three years in equal installments. That mechanic, not a servicer mistake and not a second appeal you forgot to file, is why an escrow payment on a Maryland home can keep climbing for two years after the homeowner has already gone through SDAT, and sometimes PTAAB, and won.

Three Groups, One Reassessment a Year

Under Tax-Property Section 8-104, SDAT runs a three-year revaluation cycle. Every parcel in the state sits in one of three groups, and each group gets a full physical or desktop reassessment once every three years, not once a year and not on a statewide reset. In practice this means roughly a third of Maryland homeowners get a brand-new full value from SDAT every January, while the other two-thirds sit somewhere inside a phase-in schedule that was set in a prior year.

When your group comes up, SDAT does not simply move your taxable value to the new number. It compares the new full value to your existing base value, and if the new number is higher, it splits the difference into three equal annual steps that land in the current and next two tax years. SDAT's own real property data search describes this directly: the increase is phased in equal annual increments, while a decrease in value is applied immediately with no phase-in at all. The asymmetry matters. A drop in market value helps you the same year it is found. A jump in market value is metered out to you over three, whether or not you appeal.

A worked phase-in (hypothetical example)

Say a Howard County home has a base value of $380,000, close to Maryland's statewide median, taxed at the state's roughly 1.07% effective rate for an annual bill near $4,066. SDAT's triennial review finds a new full value of $437,000, a 15% jump reflecting three years of local sales. Nobody appeals. Here is what the taxable value, and the tax bill, look like across the phase-in, with no further action from anyone:

• Year 0 (pre-reassessment): taxable value $380,000, annual tax about $4,066
• Year 1: taxable value $399,000 (base plus one-third of the $57,000 increase), annual tax about $4,269
• Year 2: taxable value $418,000, annual tax about $4,473
• Year 3 (full value reached): taxable value $437,000, annual tax about $4,676

(Rates and actual reassessment increases vary by county and by cycle, so treat these as illustration of the mechanic, not a quote.) That is three consecutive annual escrow increases with zero new appraisal, zero new sale, and zero further action by anyone. A homeowner who does nothing but pay the bill will see her escrow payment rise every single year for three years off a single reassessment event.

A 45-Day Deadline That Lands in the Dead of Winter

Most states mail reassessment notices in spring, when homeowners are already thinking about taxes. Maryland does the opposite. SDAT mails reassessment notices at the end of December, for values that take effect the following January 1, to the one-third of the state whose group is up that year. Under Tax-Property Section 14-502, you then have 45 days from the date on that notice to file a written appeal with the Supervisor of Assessments, which typically lands the deadline in mid-February.

That timing is not an accident of bureaucratic scheduling so much as a structural risk. Late December is when most households are least likely to be scrutinizing county mail. A notice that arrives between Christmas and New Year's, with a clock that starts running immediately, is exactly the kind of piece easiest to set aside and forget until the deadline has already passed. If you buy a Maryland home after January 1 but before the next taxable year begins, Section 14-502 gives you a separate 60-day window measured from your transfer date instead, which is worth knowing if you closed mid-cycle and inherited someone else's notice timeline.

If you miss the 45-day window entirely, the door does not close for the rest of the three-year cycle. Maryland allows a petition for review for the remaining tax years in the cycle, due on the first business day after January 1 of each of those years. It is a real second chance, but it means waiting up to a year to be heard again while the phase-in keeps stepping your taxable value upward in the meantime.

What an Appeal Actually Changes

Here is the part that surprises homeowners who win: a successful appeal filed right after the December notice does not necessarily stop the multi-year climb. It changes the ceiling the phase-in is climbing toward, not the fact that there is a climb.

Go back to the $380,000 base value and $437,000 new full value from the example above. Suppose the homeowner files within the 45-day window and the Supervisor of Assessments, or PTAAB on appeal, agrees the new full value should be $407,000 instead of $437,000, a real $30,000 win. The phase-in does not disappear. It recalculates against the lower number. The increase to be phased in drops from $57,000 to $27,000, split into three annual steps of $9,000:

• Year 1: taxable value $389,000, annual tax about $4,162
• Year 2: taxable value $398,000, annual tax about $4,259
• Year 3 (full value reached): taxable value $407,000, annual tax about $4,355

Compare that to the unappealed path above ($4,269, then $4,473, then $4,676) and the win is real: roughly $107, then $214, then $321 saved in each of the next three years, growing every year because the phase-in compounds off a lower base. But notice what did not happen. The bill still went up in year 1. It still went up again in year 2. An escrow account funding this loan will still show a rising monthly payment for two more annual analyses after the appeal was won, and a homeowner who does not understand the phase-in mechanic is likely to call the servicer convinced something went wrong, the way the Anne Arundel homeowner in the opening illustration does.

Where the County Calendar Meets the RESPA Calendar

Your escrow account does not run on SDAT's triennial clock. Under Regulation X (12 CFR 1024.17), your servicer must run an escrow analysis once per escrow computation year, a 12-month cycle set by your loan, not by the state. That analysis looks at what the servicer actually disbursed to the county and what it expects to disburse next, and it is this projection, not the SDAT notice itself, that decides your monthly payment.

Because Maryland's phase-in produces a new, higher taxable value on a fixed schedule every January for three straight years, a servicer that is paying attention can actually project years 1, 2, and 3 in advance. In practice, few servicers proactively build the full three-year schedule into a single projection. Most simply react to whatever tax bill the county sends that year, which means your escrow payment moves once a year, a step behind the phase-in, rather than smoothly.

• The surplus rule. If an escrow analysis shows a surplus of $50 or more, the servicer must refund it within 30 days (Section 1024.17(f)(2)(i)), so long as you are current, meaning payments received within 30 days of the due date (Section 1024.17(f)(2)(ii)). This is the rule that returns money to you after a successful appeal lowers a bill your servicer already paid at the old projection.
• The off-cycle option. Regulation X permits, but does not require, an analysis outside the annual cycle (Section 1024.17(f)(1)(ii)). Once SDAT or PTAAB issues a corrected value, sending that decision to your escrow department and asking for an early re-analysis is a real, if not guaranteed, way to pull savings forward instead of waiting for the next scheduled analysis.
• The cushion cap. A servicer may hold a reserve cushion, but never more than one-sixth of estimated annual disbursements (Section 1024.17(c)(5)). Because Maryland's phase-in raises your projected disbursement every single year for three years running, your allowed cushion rises right along with it, which is one more reason your escrow payment can climb faster than the tax bill alone would suggest.
• The annual statement. Within 30 days after your computation year ends, you get a statement itemizing every disbursement (Section 1024.17(i)). In a phase-in year, check that the tax figure your servicer used matches the actual SDAT-calculated taxable value for that specific year, not last year's number carried forward by mistake.

The Appeal Ladder: Four Levels, Three Deadlines

Maryland's appeal path runs through four distinct levels, and each one has its own clock:

1. Supervisor of Assessments (Informal). Your first stop, filed within 45 days of the December notice under Section 14-502. Often a phone or in-person conference rather than a formal hearing.
2. Property Tax Assessment Appeals Board (PTAAB). An independent, Governor-appointed board that exists separately from SDAT, one for each county and Baltimore City. You have 30 days from the Supervisor's decision to appeal to PTAAB.
3. Maryland Tax Court. A more formal but still administrative body. You have 30 days from a PTAAB order to appeal here, and this is typically where higher-value disputes land.
4. Circuit Court. The final stop, again within 30 days of the Tax Court decision. Review is confined to the record built at the Tax Court; you generally cannot introduce new evidence on the merits.

Every one of those levels operates on Maryland's calendar, not your escrow calendar. Winning at PTAAB in June still has to travel through your next scheduled RESPA analysis before it shows up as a lower payment, exactly the same lag Texas homeowners deal with, just layered on top of a phase-in schedule that keeps moving in the background regardless of where you are in the appeal ladder.

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