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Cincinnati · guides

For anyone holding a Cincinnati report

How to read a Cincinnati report

Who keeps which record here, what the county's market value is and is not, and the one number this city publishes that most cities will not.

Two bodies keep the record here, and the report says which wrote each line. The City of Cincinnati files permits, code enforcement, 311, fire and police. Hamilton County, through its Auditor and the CAGIS mapping service, keeps the parcel: its value, its class, its acreage and its last recorded sale.

The county's market value is not a valuation

The figure at the top of a Cincinnati report is the Auditor's market value, split into land and improvement. It is what the county has recorded for tax purposes on its own reappraisal cycle. It is not an appraisal, not an asking price, and not what the building would fetch. City Hall at 801 Plum St carries $3,418,540 of land and $10,750,940 of improvement, which is a real figure about a real building and still not a valuation of it.

There is no Proposition 13 in Ohio

This matters most to anyone arriving from California. There, an assessment is anchored to the last sale and rises about two per cent a year, so a long-held building carries a tax bill unrelated to its worth. Ohio does not work that way: the county reappraises on a cycle, so a long hold implies nothing about the tax, and a seller's bill is not evidence about a buyer's. Any advice built on Proposition 13 is simply false here.

A board of revision flag means the value is being argued about

Where a parcel carries one, the report says so. It means the recorded value has been formally contested, so the figure shown is what the roll holds today rather than what it will hold once that is settled.

Counts run 7 September 2026.

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