Every home in Philadelphia has a public assessment record — a single value the City assigns, and a set of characteristics it believes are true about your property. Looking it up takes a minute. Deciding whether the number is actually right is the part that matters, and it's the part most owners never do. Here's how to find your record, read it, and judge it.
Start with the Office of Property Assessment (OPA) property search at phila.gov. Search by your street address and it pulls up your parcel — the single record the City maintains for your property. You don't need an account or a login; anyone can view any parcel, and it's free.
On your record you'll see three things worth noting. First, the assessed (market) value — the dollar figure OPA has placed on your home. Second, the land versus improvement split, which breaks that total into the value of the lot and the value of the building on it. Third, the property characteristics the City has on file: square footage, number of stories, room and bathroom counts, year built, condition, and similar details. Those characteristics aren't cosmetic — they're the inputs the assessment is built from.
The headline number is the one that costs you money. Philadelphia calculates your annual tax bill as roughly 1.4% of your assessed value — 1.3998%, to be exact — so the value on your record maps almost directly to the dollars you pay. There's no separate assessment ratio to untangle here: the market value OPA sets is the number your bill runs on. A home valued at, say, twice another home pays roughly twice the tax.
The land-versus-building split matters less for what you owe today and more for understanding how the value was built. OPA values hundreds of thousands of parcels at once using mass appraisal — statistical models keyed to recent sales and to the characteristics in each record. On a typical rowhome most of the value sits in the improvement; on a large lot more of it sits in the land. Neither split changes your total on its own, but it tells you which inputs the model leaned on to reach your number.
That's why the square footage, story and room counts, year built, and condition on file are worth checking closely: the model treats each of them as fact. If any is wrong, the value built on top of it is wrong too — and unlike a market argument, a wrong characteristic is something you can prove.
The fastest way to a lower assessment is often the simplest: a plain factual mistake in your record. Records drift over decades — an overstated square footage, a bathroom or bedroom that was never there, an extra story, a finished-basement or finished-attic flag that doesn't match reality, or a condition rating that's too generous for a home with original systems and deferred maintenance.
Any of these can inflate your value, because the model trusts them. A factual error is the cleanest grounds for a reduction there is — you're not arguing about the market, you're correcting the City's own data — and it costs nothing to verify. Walk through your record field by field against what's actually there. Our guide on how to read your OPA assessment notice shows exactly which fields to check and what each one means.
A record can be perfectly error-free and still be over-assessed. That's the question most people are really asking when they look up their number: not "is the paperwork correct," but "is this value more than my home is actually worth?"
There's only one honest test, and it's comparable sales. What have genuinely similar homes near you — similar size, age, condition, and lot — actually sold for recently? If your assessed value sits well above what those comparable properties are trading at, the value is likely too high, and you have a real case. If it lines up, the number is probably defensible, and knowing that saves you the trouble of filing. Our self-check walkthrough shows the underlying math, and the comparable-sales guide explains how to pick and adjust comps so the comparison holds up.
Here's the honest catch: doing that comparable-sales check by hand is the tedious part. You have to find recent sales, screen out the ones that aren't truly comparable, adjust for the differences that remain, and weigh it all against your own number — the kind of work that quietly stops most people before they start. A free assessment check does exactly that for you in minutes, so you get a straight answer without the legwork.
Use the Office of Property Assessment (OPA) property search at phila.gov. Enter your street address and it returns your parcel's record — the assessed (market) value, the split between land and improvements, and the property characteristics the City has on file, such as square footage and room counts. It's the same record the City uses to calculate your bill, and it's free to view.
In Philadelphia they are the same number. OPA sets a single market value for your property through mass appraisal, and that figure is the assessed value your tax bill is calculated from. There's no separate assessment ratio to apply — your annual tax is roughly 1.4% (1.3998%) of that market value, so the value on your record drives the bill directly.
Yes, it can matter a great deal. Mass appraisal leans heavily on the characteristics in your record, so an overstated square footage, an extra bathroom that doesn't exist, or a wrong story or condition flag can inflate your value. A plain factual error in the OPA record is one of the cleanest grounds for a reduction, and it costs nothing to point out.
The test is comparable sales: what have genuinely similar homes near you actually sold for recently? If your assessed value sits well above what comparable properties are trading at, after adjusting for size, condition, and lot, the value is likely too high. A record that's error-free can still be over-assessed — the comps are what settle it.
Yes. Viewing your record on the OPA property search at phila.gov is free, and so is TaxAssessmentIQ's assessment check — enter your address and get an honest verdict from the City's own recorded sales, with no sign-up and no account. You only pay if you decide you want a ready-to-file appeal packet.
TaxAssessmentIQ gives you a free, honest verdict from the City's own recorded sales — just enter your address, no sign-up and no account. If your home looks over-assessed, you can get a ready-to-file appeal packet for a flat, one-time price, backed by a money-back guarantee. If it isn't worth filing, we tell you that too — for free, before you pay anything.