This is the distinction that turned my anger into an actual plan. Assessed value and market value are two different numbers, and the difference between them is the whole game.
Market value is what your home would actually sell for today. It moves constantly. It's the Zillow-and-Redfin number, the "what did the place down the street go for" number.
Assessed value is the Assessor's estimate of your market value as of January 1 of the assessment year, produced by a model running over hundreds of thousands of properties. No human walked yours. In a rising market that estimate tends to lag behind reality. In a fast-moving or falling market, it can overshoot — badly.
That gap — assessment sitting above what your home is really worth — is exactly what an appeal targets. In my case the gap was not subtle. The county said $1,373,000. The appraisal my bank ordered when I bought the place came in around $1,000,000. That's not a rounding error. That's a case.
If your assessed value is sitting above what your home would really sell for, you have the same opening I did. Here's how to appeal it, step by step.