I believe one of the problems in your assessment approach is the solution you applied to address a related problem. From the Tribune's 2017 article on the Tax Divide: ‘After months of testing, Berry and the RW Ventures team settled on a novel approach: Divide properties used in the models into segments based on sale price — high, medium or low — and compute values separately. That way, two houses with similar characteristics but wildly different sale prices wouldn’t skew the estimates for all homes.’

This solution creates a ladder for property assessments. It pushes many middle class homes for which there are few sales prices up a rung where they are subject to a minimum valuation, even in appeals to the CCAO. For example, the high-price segment for Jefferson Township starts at $380,000, so my home, which is small at just over 600 square feet, was originally assessed at $380,000. Meanwhile, more expensive homes in the segment (above $600,000, say) have no higher rung and minimum assessment to push/prop up their assessments, including when their assessments are appealed. Moreover, home sales data for new construction and rehabs is much more plentiful than for old affordable homes like ours. Data for these expensive homes is the reason our home and others like it are placed in the high-price segment for assessment purposes.