Blount Co. reappraised property values this year. Property owners recently received notice of reappraisals. If you are a property owner in Blount Co. or any other Tennessee county that was reappraised this year, you should check your reappraisal notice carefully.

Ours seemed out of whack, so we ran some comps to confirm and went down to the temporary appraiser's review office at Midland Shopping Center to discuss it. We came armed with a lot of paperwork. The guy who helped us said "Y'all know more than you are supposed to. We like that. Helps us catch mistakes."

We were lucky, and just happened to get the appraiser who appraised our house. He noticed right away that there was indeed a mistake (a "keypunch error" he called it), said it was his error and he was sorry, and that he'd fix it and we'd get a corrected notice in a few weeks.

He told us that the Blount Co. average appraisal was up about 30% since the last county-wide appraisal in 2001. Some neighborhoods and areas will be lower or higher depending on market conditions, etc. But if your reappraisal went up significantly more than that, you might want to go talk to them about it.

They are human and they do make mistakes. (We thought it was because we were the only Democrats on our street.) They are also quite reasonable, and most helpful.