Orange County’s property values saw significant increases again during this four-year cycle of revaluation, which is still continuing for homeowners who are appealing their values. A new group called the Orange County Property Tax Justice Coalition is helping dozens of homeowners in historically Black neighborhoods push back on their valuations – pointing to data that shows how a disproportionate amount of the financial burden falls to them instead of wealthier homeowners.
In 2021 during Orange County’s last revaluation cycle, Hudson Vaughan was going through his neighbors’ and his own property value appeals in the Northside neighborhood of Chapel Hill with the help of the Marian Cheek Jackson Center. After sharing concerns of “mass inequities” with Orange County, the group helped more than 140 residents receive adjusted values – decreasing them by more than $7 million in total value and lowering their tax bills. Since then, Vaughan studied at the UNC School of Government to better understand the property assessment process, help residents in future cycles and, ideally, help the county government adjust its approaches.
But the initial reassessed values pulled from Orange County neighborhoods in 2025, he said, resemble similar imbalances to the prior revaluation – with values now even higher and more consistently reflecting how historically Black neighborhoods are seeing high valuations without “market justification.”
An aerial view of houses in the Northside neighborhood of Chapel Hill, which grew in the 19th century as the neighborhood where enslaved Black residents lived while building the campus of the University of North Carolina. Known to be home to many long-time Black homeowners and families, the area has also become a place for student rentals to be built once plots go on the market. (Photo via the Town of Chapel Hill.)
The Property Tax Justice Coalition held a media availability on Monday to present its concerns about the county’s process and how much of the tax burden from 2025’s increased values may fall on longtime Black homeowners.
“Four years ago,” Vaughan said during the event, “we didn’t know a lot of the assessment tools, collectively, nor did we know that the problems extended beyond one community. We found these crazy problems in Northside, and we ended up having [the county] revalue all of Northside after quite a fight. They did, and it actually saved the long-term residents over [$500,000] in property taxes over these last four years.
“I think we assumed those fixes would stay in place,” he added, “and unfortunately, that’s why we’re sad to be back [here] again.”
By state law, the Orange County tax office and its appraisers are required to determine the market values for each residential property. Primarily, that comes from sales ratios – or the comparison of the prior value to the latest sale prices within a neighborhood – and other methods approved by the county’s elected officials before each revaluation cycle in a “schedule of values.”
Orange County Tax Administrator Nancy Freeman confirmed to Chapelboro the process is subjective, with the appraisers following the schedule of values to pull characteristics of residential properties and run them alongside information of the sales in each neighborhood since the last revaluation. They enter that data into their software, which generates a calculation that the tax office appraisers review. Freeman confirmed that her office, where she’s worked since 1997, did not change its methodology after the 2021 fixes made to the Northside neighborhood and that details of the homeowners are not considered in the methods laid out in North Carolina’s statutes.
“We don’t really look at demographics, we don’t have that information [when we valuate],” Freeman said. “As far residential properties, we’re looking at sales, we’re not necessarily looking at people who live in the properties. You mentioned income [in a question] …income is not information we have about the owners of residential properties, so that is not a factor.
“We did not change methodology,” she concluded, “again, because work by what the state law says.”
The Big Picture
Vaughan and the Orange County Property Tax Justice Coalition, though, argue there are ways to incorporate that data into assessments while following state law, citing vertical regressivity methods used by Durham and Wake counties in their revaluation. Vaughan – who is now the director for the Community Justice Collaborative of the North Carolina Housing Coalition – said while the tax office attempts to match the sales ratios in historically Black neighborhoods, the assessed market values appear to be created from “different assumptions” compared to properties in more affluent neighborhoods in other parts of the county. While the required metrics might be followed, the data indicates they might be applied differently from neighborhood to neighborhood.
Based on the disproportionate rises in total property values mapped out by the coalition, Vaughan said that adjustments made to plots in neighborhoods like Northside in Chapel Hill, Councilville in Carrboro and Fairview in Hillsborough are leading to inflated values and, therefore, a projected inflated tax burden on longtime Black homeowners. When comparing each neighborhood at scale, he said – something the county tax office claims to not do – discrepancies in the valuations become clear.
“By looking at those [sales ratios] across these different neighborhoods and seeing that they basically had the same sales ratios the last couple of years,” Vaughan said, “that means they should not have had drastically different outcomes – at least so clearly demarcated.”
A slide from Monday’s presentation made by Hudson Vaughan and the Orange County Property Tax Justice Coalition, depicting the percentage of change in total property value by plots along the Chapel Hill-Carrboro border. The historically Black neighborhoods of Northside, Tin Top, Pine Knolls and Glosson Circle are circled. (Photo via the Orange County Property Tax Justice Coalition.)
A slide from Monday’s presentation made by Hudson Vaughan and the Orange County Property Tax Justice Coalition, depicting the percentage of change in total property value by plots in Hillsborough. The historically Black neighborhoods are circled. (Photo via the Orange County Property Tax Justice Coalition.)
Members of the Northside community commended the tax office in 2021 for its work to eventually separate out the student rental properties in their neighborhood from longer, locally-owned homes. But Vaughan said he believed while those values seemed closer to accurate in this cycle, the values of the surrounding properties also skyrocketed.
Some examples shared by the coalition on Monday, which were later independently reviewed by Chapelboro, paint a stark contrast — like the house of the late Marian Jackson on South Merritt Mill Road. The building was constructed 100 years ago and serves as a fourth-generation family home with three bedrooms and two baths. The county’s initial valuation of the 0.36 acres of land is $396,000 and the building’s is $175,000. That total estimated tax value ($571,000) is higher than the value of the six-bedroom, six-and-a-half-bathroom rental building built in 2024 by a Raleigh investor one block away. Despite the newer house having double the square footage of the historic Jackson house, its estimated tax value is $562,300.
Photo via the Orange County Property Tax Justice Coalition.
Another extreme example shared by the Property Tax Justice Coalition was the property of two Pee Wee micro-homes in the Northside neighborhood. With 0.29 acres of land for a two-bedroom, two-bathroom duplex unit of 737 square feet, the property owners face an estimated $530,000 tax value. Vaughan compared it to a five-bedroom, four-bathroom unit on a one-acre lot near East Franklin Street that sold for $755,000 in 2021. Despite that property having an additional dwelling unit built in the last two years and roughly five times the square footage, its estimated tax value would be $32,000 less ($498,100 total) than the Pee Wee homes plot.
Photo via the Orange County Property Tax Justice Coalition.
As he flipped through dozens of slides, Vaughan argued the examples highlight three major trends created by the subjective application of assessment methods used by Orange County appraisers.
“There’s inconsistent and inequitable land valuation in Orange County’s new valuation,” he said. “There is vertical regressivity that is systematic — and what that means is there’s overvaluation of low-priced housing and an undervaluation of high-priced housing. And there’s a double standard: similar market increases in White vs. Black neighborhoods lead to much higher increased average values in historically Black neighborhoods. This primarily comparing older neighborhoods, because they are harder to assess. They take more decision-making by the assessment offices because they’re more heterogeneous.”
Emphasis on the Appeals Process
The main change in Orange County’s approach in the 2025 revaluation cycle was to strengthen its messaging around the informal and formal appeals process – sending out regular reminders and frequently sharing with residents how and when to contest any new values. That stage of revaluation helps factor in those homeowner demographics, Freeman said, alongside any maintenance or renovations that could build or drop the value.
The Orange County Property Tax Justice Coalition is helping residents with that process through a widespread method: requesting the tax office make neighborhood-wide adjustments to more historically Black neighborhoods than it did in 2021. Leaders and residents from other parts of Orange County are teaming up with the people who led the Northside revaluation adjustments, like Vaughan and George Barrett, the executive director of the Marian Cheek Jackson Center.
Like the Northside community’s frustrations in the 2021 revaluation cycle, Barrett said the coalition is frustrated at the county’s emphasis on the appeals process instead of changing its valuation methodology. While appeals are the formal way – required by law – to point out an incorrect value, Barrett maintains the local government could do more to ensure the valuations are done fairly in its initial attempts.
“That [appeal messaging] puts a lot of continued burden on the folks in these communities to submit these appeals when we know that there are tools that the office and county can use to make these neighborhood adjustments and take them on at a systematic level…that actually go further than what they’ve already done,” said Barrett. “If there [are] tools that the county can use, we want them to use those and feel like it is unacceptable that the only response is, ‘People need to do their formal appeals, and that’s the only way [to fix this].’”
While Orange County residents knew to brace for major increases in values, several Black community members – including Horace Johnson II – said they feel like they must take a stand when seeing the disproportionate property value increases within their communities compared to others.
“There’s no coincidence that this is only happening in people of color’s neighborhoods and I don’t understand why [the financial burden] not being spread around,” Johnson said during Monday’s press conference. “While I’m not calling anybody a racist, if we’re looking at the facts, this is pure and simple racism – and it needs to be addressed.
“What we have seen is – time after time, slide after slide – the disproportionate valuation of the Black property opposed to its counterpart across the street that could be [white-owned],” he concluded.
What Can Be Done This Year?
Freeman and the tax office maintain their methods are equitable for Orange County homeowners – in part because of their willingness to adjust the values after meeting with groups and residents appealing new values. The tax administrator said the office is “very glad” to do neighborhood system adjustments again based on data being brought by the Orange County Property Tax Justice Coalition, with Vaughan telling Chapelboro those numbers were delivered to the office on Monday night.
As of Wednesday, Freeman confirmed Orange County received 3,553 appeals so far, with just 205 advancing to the formal portion of the process. She expects roughly 550 more formal appeals to be made before the submission period is closed on July 31, when those will then be forwarded to the Board of Equalization and Review.
More details on Orange County’s 2025 revaluation can be found on the county government’s website. Public property value assessments in the county can be found here.
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