SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--ValueAppeal (www.valueappeal.com), a pioneering online do-it-yourself property tax appeal service developed to help homeowners ensure that they are not overpaying their property taxes, today announced that it has raised $1.2 million in an over-subscribed funding round of working capital from existing angel investors. The company also announced the launch of ValueAppeal PRO® (www.valueappealpro.com), a turn-key property tax appeal practice management platform that enables financial and real estate professionals nationwide -- ranging from accountants and financial planners to real estate agents -- to easily add property tax appeal services to their core offerings for both existing and prospective new clients.
According to ValueAppeal founder and CEO Charlie Walsh, proceeds from the latest round of funding will support continued growth for the now 40-employee organization, expanded technology and product development, as well as additional strategic activity. The funding announced today follows earlier rounds totaling $3.1 million in 2010 and 2011, all from angel investors.
Since expanding nationally in 2010, ValueAppeal’s flagship direct-to-consumer Property Tax Appeal Kit has built a highly successful track record: During calendar year 2011, the average ValueAppeal customer saved $1,346 on their property taxes and enjoyed a success rate of more than 80%, compared to a success rate of 40% for those who challenge their property taxes on their own. During the past three years, the company received numerous inquiries from financial and real estate professionals who wanted to offer ValueAppeal’s services to their clients, leading to the development of ValueAppeal PRO.
“We are pleased to announce our latest round of funding along with the launch of ValueAppeal PRO. Today, ValueAppeal is to residential property taxes what online tax return preparation tools are to income taxes,” said Walsh. “While we will continue to improve ValueAppeal’s flagship product for consumers to ensure that they are not paying more than their fair share of property taxes, ValueAppeal PRO’s powerful suite of SaaS-based tools now enable tax preparers, CPAs, attorneys, appraisers, home inspectors, loan officers, real estate agents, and others to accelerate their businesses by using our proven service to help their new and existing clients address property taxes issues on a hyper-local level.”
Having completed a successful pilot program and built with the same proven algorithm as the Property Tax Appeal Kit, the ValueAppeal PRO platform offers a powerful customer acquisition tool for finance and real estate professionals. “If a professional wants to quickly identify all the homes within thirty miles of their office that are overassessed and could save at least $3,000 on their property taxes, we can deliver this,” continued Walsh. “ValueAppeal is literally the only company in the world with that capability because we’ve spent the last three years developing a unique patent-pending algorithm to do the needed analysis.”
ValueAppeal PRO offers basic and advanced “starter kits,” providing all of the needed tools and resources for professionals to easily establish, market and manage complete property tax appeal programs for their clients.
“ValueAppeal PRO is a game-changing product, especially by empowering accounting or real estate professionals to offer high-quality property tax appeals for their clients in radically less time than was previously required,” said Randy Johnston, executive vice president of K2 Enterprises, the largest provider of technology Continuing Professional Education (CPE) programs for accountants in North America. “For accountants and others who place a priority on providing quality documentation and client service, ValueAppeal PRO simultaneously saves time and provides the high levels of evidence and documentation needed to support successful appeals.”
Using the ValueAppeal PRO platform, financial and real estate professionals can:
- Analyze Properties: Instantly determine if clients and prospects can lower property taxes, by client list or individual property. In any given year, ValueAppeal estimates that between 20-25% of homes in the US are overassessed. For those not overassessed, ValueAppeal provides on-the-spot notification, saving homeowners the time and money associated with filing appeals and preventing local assessors from being inundated with frivolous appeals.
- Create Reports: For those properties determined to be likely overassessed, ValueAppeal PRO enables professionals to build compelling appeal reports with the most relevant comparable home sales in as little as five minutes for their clients. ValueAppeal PRO also enables the easily navigation of local rules, regulations, fine print and appeal-window timeframes for clients.
- Manage Appeals: Track clients and their appeals with built-in workflow and activity management, all in one location, via ValueAppeal PRO’s Dashboard. Professionals can easily manage appeal deadlines, hearing dates, and “To-do” lists, as well as file, manage and monitor clients’ property tax appeals, create invoices, upload documents, and more.
- Expand Client Base: Add additional services and use ValueAppeal to find new leads; Professionals can purchase targeted lists of overassessed properties filtered by the estimated savings for each targeted property.
- Retain Existing Clients: ValueAppeal PRO enables financial and real estate professionals to provide a service that can save substantial money for their clients while providing a valuable reason to maintain ongoing client contact. In doing so, it can also allow professionals to retain clients for property tax appeal services, rather than refer them elsewhere.
About ValueAppeal
ValueAppeal (www.valueappeal.com) is a pioneering property tax appeal service developed to help homeowners ensure that they are not overpaying their property taxes. ValueAppeal's proprietary and patent-pending technology instantly analyzes a designated property and identifies, based on comparable property sales and other criteria, whether a property is overassessed. It then provides an easy-to-use process for homeowners to develop a complete tax appeal online in minutes, compared to the many hours or even days that a more complicated 'traditional' offline appeal process requires. ValueAppeal’s flagship product, the Property Tax Appeal Kit, costs $99 and the company provides a 100% money-back guarantee for any customers whose assessments are not lowered using ValueAppeal’s evidence. The company’s ValueAppeal PRO® enables financial and real estate professionals to easily offer property tax appeal services to both existing and prospective new clients. Based in Seattle, WA, ValueAppeal generates users through direct consumer channels and is developing strategic partnerships with other organizations whose customers could benefit directly from ValueAppeal’s services.