Travis Bunn

Founder, AppealDesk · Published March 27, 2026 · Updated August 25, 2026

Every Ohio County Shares the Same March 31 Deadline. Almost None of Them Share the Same Reappraisal Year.

Updated August 2026

Ohio runs property valuation on a rolling schedule. Under ORC Section 5713.01, every county auditor has to physically reappraise every parcel at least once every six years, the sexennial reappraisal, and under ORC Section 5715.33, the tax commissioner orders a statistical triennial update midway through that cycle. Nothing about that schedule is statewide. Cuyahoga County can be in year one of its cycle while Butler County is in year four. That is normal, and by design.

What is not staggered is the complaint deadline. Under ORC Section 5715.19, the window to file a valuation complaint with your county's Board of Revision runs January 1 through March 31 every single year, in every county, whether or not this happens to be your county's reappraisal or update year. Homeowners who don't get a mailed notice, which mostly goes out only in reappraisal and update years, often assume that means there's nothing to contest this year. There is. Your value is on the public roll by March 31 regardless, and the deadline to challenge it does not care whether your county touched it recently. Miss it, and you wait until next March, watching your mortgage servicer keep collecting on a number you never got to challenge.

What Over-Assessed Actually Means in Ohio

Ohio taxes real property at 35% of true value in money under ORC Sections 5713.03 and 5715.01, the county auditor's estimate of what your home would sell for on the open market. That 35% figure, your taxable value, is what your local millage rate is actually applied against. Everything downstream, your tax bill and eventually your escrow payment, traces back to that one auditor number.

Here's the part the staggered cycle obscures: a triennial update can move your true value through statistical adjustment based on countywide sales data, without anyone setting foot on your property and often without an individual mailed notice reaching you. So even in a year that feels quiet, your assessed value can shift, and the only way to know for sure is to check the roll, not wait for mail that may not come.

Four Levels, One Deadline That Opens the Door

Ohio's appeal ladder, called a complaint at the first formal stage, has four possible stops:

1. County Auditor (Informal). Many county auditor offices will do an informal review of your property record before you file a formal complaint. It's optional, and it doesn't extend your deadline.
2. Board of Revision. File a formal complaint with the county auditor between January 1 and March 31 under ORC Section 5715.19. This is the real deadline. Most homeowners are also limited to one valuation complaint per three-year interim period between your county's reappraisal and its next update, unless a narrow exception applies, such as a recent arm's-length sale, under ORC Section 5715.19(A)(2).
3. Board of Tax Appeals. If the Board of Revision rules against you, you have 30 days from the mailing of that decision to appeal to the state Board of Tax Appeals, under ORC Section 5717.01.
4. Court of Appeals. A Board of Tax Appeals decision can be appealed within 30 days of its journal entry to the applicable Court of Appeals, under ORC Section 5717.04. A 2017 change to that statute (House Bill 49) removed the old option of appealing directly to the Ohio Supreme Court, so the Court of Appeals is now the standard next stop.

A case that starts with a March 31 filing can still be working through the Board of Tax Appeals or a Court of Appeals docket more than a year later. None of those hearing calendars move any faster because your county happens to be mid-cycle on its own reappraisal schedule.

Meanwhile: The RESPA Clock That Doesn't Care Where Your Complaint Stands

Your mortgage escrow account doesn't run on Ohio's reappraisal cycle, and it doesn't run on the Board of Revision's hearing calendar either. Under Regulation X, 12 CFR 1024.17(c)(3), your servicer must run an escrow analysis once per computation year, a twelve-month cycle fixed by your loan. That analysis pays whatever bill the county treasurer actually sends, built from whatever value is currently on the auditor's roll. It does not check whether a complaint is pending at the Board of Revision, the Board of Tax Appeals, or a Court of Appeals.

Ohio adds its own wrinkle here: real property taxes are collected a year in arrears under ORC Section 323.12. The value on the roll as of January 1, 2026 generates a tax bill that most county treasurers don't actually send until 2027, typically a first-half installment around February and a second-half installment around July. That means even a complaint you win quickly at the Board of Revision in 2026 doesn't produce a corrected bill until 2027, and your escrow account doesn't see that correction until your servicer's next scheduled analysis catches it.

A worked example (hypothetical, not a real case)

Say a homeowner in Stark County has a home the auditor lists at Ohio's median, $173,000. Stark isn't due for a full reappraisal or triennial update that year, so no individual notice arrives. At the 35% assessment ratio, that's a $60,550 taxable value; at Ohio's 1.53% effective rate, that works out to roughly $2,647 in annual property tax, close to the statewide average. (Local millage varies by taxing district, so treat this as illustration, not a quote.) She pulls comparable sales anyway, believes the auditor's true value is overstated by about 10%, and files a complaint with the Board of Revision before the March 31 deadline even though her county isn't in a reappraisal year.

• Complaint filed, March: Hearing scheduled for later in the year. The auditor's roll still shows the original $173,000 value in the meantime.
• Board of Revision decision, say a 10% reduction: True value cut to roughly $155,700, new taxable value around $54,495, new annual tax around $2,382, a savings of about $265 a year.
• First tax bill reflecting the win: Not until the following year, since Ohio bills the current tax year's value in arrears under ORC Section 323.12.
• Escrow analysis: Only catches the lower bill at the servicer's next scheduled twelve-month analysis after that corrected bill actually arrives.

Between the arrears billing lag and the servicer's own annual cycle, a win filed and decided within a single calendar year can still take well over a year to show up as a lower monthly payment. If she had instead assumed "my county isn't reappraising this year, there's nothing to appeal" and let March 31 pass, none of this would have been available to her at all.

When the Win Finally Reaches Your Escrow Account

Whichever level rules in your favor, the auditor updates the roll, the county treasurer issues a corrected bill (or a refund credit, if the disputed amount was already collected), and none of that moves your monthly mortgage payment by itself. Your servicer has to see it. Three parts of 12 CFR 1024.17 control what happens once it does:

• The surplus rule. If your next analysis shows a surplus of $50 or more, the servicer must refund it within 30 days, provided you are current on the loan (Section 1024.17(f)(2)(i) and (f)(2)(ii)).
• The cushion cap. Servicers can hold a cushion of no more than one-sixth of estimated annual disbursements (Section 1024.17(c)(5)). A lower tax bill shrinks that allowed cushion too, which is often why a post-win refund is bigger than the tax savings alone would suggest.
• The off-cycle option. A servicer is permitted, not required, to run an analysis outside its normal annual cycle (Section 1024.17(f)(1)(ii)). Send them the auditor's corrected value and the county treasurer's revised bill and ask; the annual analysis will catch it eventually either way, but asking costs nothing.

If your case went all the way to the Board of Tax Appeals or a Court of Appeals, don't assume your servicer is tracking the docket. Nobody in the escrow department is watching Board of Tax Appeals filings for you. The corrected treasurer's bill is what actually moves your payment, so keep the decision and the revised bill together and send both the moment they arrive.

Key Counties

The highest-volume appeal jurisdictions in Ohio are Cuyahoga, Franklin, Hamilton, Summit, Montgomery, Lucas, Butler, and Stark counties. Each sets its own sexennial reappraisal and triennial update years on its own schedule, so your county's cycle position tells you nothing about whether the March 31 statewide complaint deadline applies to you this year. It always does. Confirm your specific auditor's current reappraisal or update status, and your Board of Revision's filing procedure, before you file.

FAQ