Maryland’s highest court recently held that the tax court can value a property by relying on sale prices of comparable properties bought soon after a cutoff date for the assessment. In Ann Lane v. Supervisor of Assessments of Montgomery County, the Maryland Court of Appeals concluded that the Maryland Tax Court had properly taken into account sales of comparable properties that occurred a few months after the so-called date of finality when determining the value of a condominium. The date of finality is a Maryland assessment tool used to determine the value of a property once every three years and is defined as “January 1, immediately before the 1st taxable year to which the assessment based on the new value is applicable.”
