With $1.2M in funding, ValueAppeal launches pro version of property tax appeal service

ValueAppeal has raised $1.2 million in a round of funding and it has launched a professional version of its service that enables people to appeal their property tax assessments.

The new pro service is aimed at financial and real estate professionals. It allows those professionals to easily add property tax appeal services to their core offerings for both existing and prospective new clients.

Charlie Walsh, chief executive of Seattle-based ValueAppeal, said the funding will enable the 40-employee company to continue to expand its technology and product development. To date, the company has raised $4.3 million in four rounds from angel investors. ValueAppeal launched in 2010 with its consumer-focused Property Tax Appeal Kit. During 2011, the company says it saved customers $1,346 on average on their property taxes and saw a success rate of more than 80 percent. Only about 40 percent of the people who challenge property taxes on their own succeed.

“ValueAppeal is to residential property taxes what online tax return preparation tools are to income taxes,” said Walsh. “While we will continue to improve ValueAppeal’s flagship product for consumers to ensure that they are not paying more than their fair share of property taxes, ValueAppeal PRO’s powerful suite of software-as-a-service tools now enable tax preparers, CPAs, attorneys, appraisers, home inspectors, loan officers, real estate agents, and others to accelerate their businesses.

ValueAppeal automates the appeal process. If it decides your assessment is too high, the company will take on the task of proving your case to the local county assessor. ValueAppeal can now cover the entire country with its service.

As homeowners deal with economic turmoil and crazy home prices, this kind of service is really useful. If you aren’t eligible for a refund, you can find that out in minutes. But if you are entitled to money back, the company can make the process of doing an appeal much easier. With the pro version, users can analyze properties and determine if clients can lower their property taxes based on things such as comparable property sales and other criteria.

The company was founded in 2009.

[Picture credit: Bighouses.biz]