Francisco Espinosa appealed the county’s 2025 valuation for his Monroe‑area home, arguing school‑zone realignments and errors in the assessor’s records inflated his property’s value.

Espinosa told the Union County Board of Equalization and Review that when he bought land to build his house he expected his children to attend Sun Valley schools but that school boundary changes reassigned his address. He said the reassignment reduced market demand and that the assessor had mistakenly listed an extra bedroom and a fireplace on the county record, inflating the tax valuation. “They have wrongly compared my house to the houses that I know in the school district,” Espinosa said, and he submitted a lender appraisal that showed $724,000 as his opinion of market value.

County appraisers told the board the taxpayer’s appraisal had an effective date after the statutory cutoff — most comparable sales must be dated on or before Jan. 1, 2025 — and therefore the county gave it little weight. The county said it corrected the bedroom and fireplace entries in its records, removed post‑cutoff improvements (a pool completed after Jan. 1, 2025) from consideration, and performed a sales‑comparison analysis using nearby comps. The appraiser said the county’s analysis yielded a revised value of $858,200.

Board members probed both the admissibility of comps dated after Jan. 1 and the effect of bedroom counts on valuation. The board and county staff checked school‑zone layers live during the hearing to confirm the parcel’s assignment; staff reported the parcel falls on the Weddington side of the boundary but sits on the line. The board voted in deliberations to retain the county’s $858,200 valuation.

Next steps: the board will notify parties of the written decision and mailing timeline; taxpayers retain statutory appeal rights under state law.