Wake County tax administrator: recent revaluation drove sharp value gains; county will shorten cycle to reduce sticker shock

Marcus Kinrade, Wake County tax administrator, told the Town of Garner council on March 25 that Wake County’s 2024 revaluation produced substantial assessed-value increases across the county and that the tax office is changing procedures to reduce future taxpayer surprise.

Kinrade said Wake County saw countywide assessed-value growth of about 51 percent through the 2024 revaluation on its four‑year cycle and that local comparison counties reported similar jumps (Johnston County about 70 percent, Durham County about 75 percent, Orange County about 49 percent). He said Wake County added roughly 75,000 parcels in the nine years since the county shortened the revaluation cycle from eight years to four years in 2016, a gain Kinrade described as “the equivalent of Alamance County.”

The tax administrator said the county recorded about 15,900 informal appeals during the informal window (a 3.7 percent rate) and 8,935 formal appeals to the county’s Board of Equalization and Review (a 2.1 percent formal appeal rate across roughly 430,000 parcels). Kinrade said the county carried about 977 formal appeals into calendar year 2025, mostly commercial cases, and expected to finish those hearings in March 2025.

Kinrade described…