New Orleans tax assessor: how assessments, exemptions, and appeals work

Last updated 2026-07-09

Who is the New Orleans tax assessor and what does that office actually do?

Orleans Parish has one assessor for the whole parish. That's a recent thing. Louisiana's 1974 constitution let parishes keep up to seven ward assessors, and Orleans kept all seven until voters merged them into a single office in 2010 ^[1]. The first unified assessor took office in January 2011.

The assessor's job is to figure out the fair market value of every parcel, apply the right assessment ratio, keep the tax rolls current, and process exemptions. The assessor does not set the tax rate. The assessor does not collect a dime. Those jobs belong to the city's Bureau of Treasury and the taxing bodies (the city, the school board, the levee districts, and others) that set millage rates every year.

For residential property, Louisiana law requires the assessor to assess at 10 percent of fair market value ^[2]. A home worth $350,000 gets an assessed value of $35,000. Millage rates then apply to that $35,000, not the full market value. The homestead exemption knocks the first $7,500 of assessed value off most levies, which shelters the first $75,000 of market value from the bulk of your bill.

The office sits at 1300 Perdido Street, Room 4E01, inside City Hall. Call (504) 658-1300, or search your property through the online portal at nola.gov ^[3].

How does the Orleans Parish Assessor determine your property's value?

The assessor uses three standard approaches. Which one leads depends on your property type.

For single-family homes and small residential buildings, sales comparison is the main method. The assessor pulls recent arm's-length sales of similar properties in your neighborhood, then adjusts for size, age, condition, and features. Orleans Parish ran a major reappraisal for 2021 and again for the 2024 tax year, which caught the sharp climb in New Orleans home prices since 2020 ^[3].

For income-producing property (apartment buildings, retail, office), the income approach usually takes over. The assessor estimates net operating income and capitalizes it at a market rate. For big commercial buildings, a cost approach (replacement cost minus depreciation) can back up the other two.

Louisiana Revised Statute 47:2323 requires assessments to reflect fair market value as of January 1 of the tax year ^[9]. So a price surge in the second half of the year should not touch your current assessment. It almost certainly shows up in the next cycle, though.

Here's the part that catches people off guard: state law requires the assessor to reappraise everything at least every four years ^[2]. Orleans has run roughly on that four-year rhythm. Buy in a hot market right after a reassessment and you can get hit with a big jump at the next cycle even though your own home didn't change a bit.

What is the homestead exemption in Orleans Parish and how do you apply?

The homestead exemption is the biggest tax break most New Orleans homeowners ever get. Louisiana's constitution grants a $7,500 exemption on the assessed value of an owner-occupied primary residence ^[7]. Since homes are assessed at 10 percent of market value, that $7,500 shelters the first $75,000 of your home's market value from most taxes.

To qualify, you have to own the property and live in it as your primary residence as of January 1 of the tax year. You apply once at the assessor's office. After that it renews on its own, year after year, as long as nothing changes. You do need to re-file if you move, if ownership transfers, or if you've been away long enough to raise a question about primary residency.

The application asks for proof of ownership (your act of sale or mortgage document), a Louisiana driver's license or ID showing the property address, and your Social Security number ^[3]. No filing fee.

A handful of levies sit outside the homestead exemption, including certain special assessment districts and some library millages, so your bill never hits zero. For a median-priced New Orleans home, the exemption usually saves somewhere between $600 and $1,200 a year, depending on the millages in your district.

Homeowners 65 and older with household income under a set threshold may also qualify for a special assessment freeze that locks the assessed value of their homestead ^[4]. The income limit shifts periodically. Check with the assessor's office each year, because it's not always well-publicized.

When is the open-rolls period, and what is the deadline to appeal your assessment?

This is the part most homeowners miss, and missing it costs real money.

Every year the assessor opens the tax rolls for public inspection for a 15-day stretch, usually in late July or early August. The exact dates are set by the assessor and published on the office site and in the official journal. During that window you can walk in or go online, review your assessment, compare it to your neighbors' values, and file an informal appeal straight with the assessor ^[3].

If the assessor won't move your value enough during the open-rolls period, you can appeal to the Orleans Parish Board of Review. The board meets after the rolls close and hears formal protests. Lose there and you escalate to the Louisiana Tax Commission (LTC), the state body that handles final administrative appeals ^[5].

Missing the open-rolls period doesn't strip your rights forever. It does make everything harder. The LTC wants to see that you ran through the local process first.

Here's the typical annual calendar (exact dates move year to year, so verify at nola.gov each spring):

Step	Approximate Timing	Where
Assessor publishes new rolls	Late July	nola.gov
Open-rolls / informal review period	15 days in July-August	Assessor's office or online
Board of Review hearings	August-September	City Hall
Louisiana Tax Commission appeal deadline	Within 10 days of Board of Review decision [5]	LTC, Baton Rouge
Tax bills mailed	November-December	Bureau of Treasury
Property taxes due (no penalty)	December 31 [6]	Bureau of Treasury

That December 31 payment deadline matters. Louisiana law gives you until year-end. Interest and penalties start in January ^[6].

How do you actually appeal your New Orleans property tax assessment yourself?

The informal review with the assessor is your first shot and usually your best one. Show up or submit online during the open-rolls period with comparable sales that support a lower value. The staff does adjust values when you hand them solid comps. No attorney needed for this step.

Here's what a decent DIY package looks like.

Start with the assessor's property search at nola.gov. Pull the data card for your home and write down every field: square footage, year built, condition grade, bedroom and bathroom count. Then search for properties that sold in your neighborhood in the six to twelve months before January 1 of the tax year. Aim for at least three comparable sales. Five is better.

For each comp, work out the price per square foot. If your assessed market value runs meaningfully higher than what similar homes actually sell for, that gap is your whole argument. Print the comp data, a simple spreadsheet with the math, and photos of anything the assessor's records don't capture (a bad roof, foundation trouble, a flooding history).

If the informal review doesn't move things, file a formal protest with the Orleans Parish Board of Review. The board has a one-page form at the assessor's office. Bring the same comp package plus an independent appraisal if you have one. A Louisiana-licensed appraiser carries the most weight, but a strong comp analysis often gets it done for residential property without spending $400 to $600 on a formal appraisal.

If you'd rather work from a checklist and a fillable comp worksheet than build it all yourself, TaxFightBack's appeal kit has Orleans Parish templates that walk this exact process. You keep 100 percent of any reduction instead of handing a contingency firm 25 to 40 percent of your first-year savings.

Commercial property is more work. You'll document actual rents, vacancy rates, and operating expenses, then argue over capitalization rates. That's where paying a professional more often earns its keep.

If you're dealing with a similar process in another high-value market, see how Los Angeles County property tax appeals and San Diego property tax reviews work as a comparison.

What assessment ratio and millage rates apply in Orleans Parish?

Louisiana sets assessment ratios by property class in the state constitution and statutes ^[2]. Here's what applies in Orleans Parish:

Property Class	Assessment Ratio
Residential (1-4 family, owner-occupied)	10% of fair market value
Residential (non-owner-occupied)	10% of fair market value
Commercial real property	15% of fair market value
Industrial property	15% of fair market value
Public-service property	25% of fair market value

Millage rates are set every year by the various taxing bodies and applied per $1,000 of assessed value. Your total millage depends on where you live in the parish, because some special districts and neighborhood improvement districts overlay different areas.

A rough example using 2023-2024 rates: total millages for most Orleans homeowners without a special district ran about 140 to 160 mills depending on location ^[8]. On a $350,000 home with the homestead exemption, the math looks like this:

$350,000 market value x 10% = $35,000 assessed value $35,000 minus $7,500 homestead = $27,500 taxable assessed value $27,500 x 150 mills / 1,000 = roughly $4,125 a year

Check current millages against the Louisiana Tax Commission's published millage tables. The LTC posts certified rates for every parish each year ^[8].

What other exemptions and special programs does the Orleans Parish Assessor administer?

Past the standard homestead exemption, the assessor runs several programs that can cut your bill in a real way.

The special assessment freeze for seniors and disabled veterans is probably the most valuable one most homeowners never claim. Qualifying homeowners 65 or older with income under the threshold get their assessed value frozen at the level it hit when they first qualified, no matter how much values climb afterward ^[4]. The income limit in recent years has sat around $100,000 in adjusted gross household income, but the assessor confirms the current number each cycle.

Disabled veterans with a service-connected disability rated 100 percent by the VA can qualify for a full property tax exemption on their primary residence under Louisiana Revised Statute 47:1706 ^[2]. That one is large. Apply the moment you qualify.

New construction and major rehab in certain historic districts or enterprise zones may qualify for abatements under the Industrial Tax Exemption Program (ITEP) or the Historic Tax Abatement program. Most of those run at the state level and hit commercial property more than residential.

The assessor also handles the Special Assessment Level for homeowners who make qualified improvements, notably adding solar panels or other alternative energy systems, which can freeze the assessed value bump that normally follows an improvement ^[2].

For a look at how other big-city assessors stack their exemptions, the Cook County assessor tax bill process in Chicago and the Maricopa property tax system in Phoenix make useful comparisons.

How do you look up your property assessment and tax bill online?

The assessor's portal at nola.gov lets you search by address, owner name, or parcel number. You'll see the current assessed value, the property data card (square footage, year built, and the other characteristics the assessor used), and the ownership record ^[3].

Your actual tax bill lives somewhere else. The City of New Orleans Bureau of Treasury handles billing and collection. Its portal is at nola.gov, where you look up bills and make payments ^[6].

That split setup trips people up. The assessor's site tells you what your property is worth in the assessor's view and what exemptions are on file. The treasury site tells you what you owe and whether it's paid. If your homestead exemption is missing from the tax bill, the fix is almost always on the assessor's side, and that's where you call.

One practical habit: run your property lookup at the assessor's portal every year during the open-rolls period, more than when the bill shows up. Errors in square footage, bedroom count, or condition grade happen more than people expect. Catching them before the rolls close beats fixing them after by a mile.

What happens if you miss the appeal deadline or disagree with the Louisiana Tax Commission's ruling?

Miss the open-rolls period entirely and your options narrow, but they don't vanish. You can still call the assessor to flag an obvious clerical error (wrong square footage, wrong property class, a demolished structure still on the rolls). Fixing a factual error doesn't need the formal appeal window.

Went through the Board of Review and lost? You have 10 days from the board's decision to file with the Louisiana Tax Commission ^[5]. The LTC is a state agency in Baton Rouge that hears appeals from every parish. Its process is more formal. You submit a written petition, the assessor responds, and the commission schedules a hearing. The LTC's decisions turn up in its published annual reports.

If the LTC rules against you, the last stop is district court: the 19th Judicial District Court in East Baton Rouge Parish for LTC decisions, or Orleans Parish Civil District Court for certain direct challenges. Litigation is slow and expensive. For residential property, it rarely pencils out unless the error is huge.

One thing worth knowing: Louisiana Revised Statute 47:1998 lays out the rules for challenging an assessment in court, and the burden of proof matters ^[10]. The assessor's value carries a presumption of correctness. You have to prove it's wrong, more than that it differs from what you paid or what you think the place is worth.

For readers working through similar escalation paths in other southern markets, the Bexar County tax assessor in San Antonio and the Gwinnett County tax assessor in Georgia both run instructive multi-step processes.

How often does Orleans Parish reassess property, and what triggers an out-of-cycle reassessment?

Louisiana law requires each assessor to reappraise all property at least once every four years ^[2]. Orleans Parish has generally stuck to that, with major cycles touching every parcel in the parish.

The big recent cycle covered the 2021 tax year, reflecting market conditions as of January 1, 2021. New Orleans home prices rose sharply between 2020 and 2023, so the following cycle (for the 2024-2025 tax year) delivered notable increases across Gentilly, Lakeview, Mid-City, and the Bywater.

Out-of-cycle reassessments can happen a few ways: when a property sells (the sale price is public record, and a wide gap between price and assessed value can prompt an update), when someone pulls a permit for a major renovation, or when the office finds a systematic error in a neighborhood's valuations.

A sale does not automatically trigger a reassessment in Louisiana the way Proposition 13 reassessments do in California. The assessor treats sales as market evidence but does not auto-reset every sold property to its sale price. That's a real protection for buyers who pay above market.

The four-year cycle cuts the other way too. If your neighborhood got assessed in a down market, you can stay locked at a lower value until the next cycle even though your home has appreciated hard. Good for you as a taxpayer. It does raise fairness questions across the parish.

What should you do right now if your assessment looks too high?

First, pull your property data card from nola.gov and check every field. Square footage errors are common, especially on older New Orleans shotgun doubles and camelbacks where the living-area calculation isn't obvious. An extra 200 square feet in the records can cost you hundreds of dollars a year.

Next, confirm your homestead exemption is showing. If it's gone, call the assessor at (504) 658-1300. A missing exemption is one of the cleanest fixes there is, and the savings hit right away ^[3].

Data's right but the value still looks high? Gather three to five comparable sales from the six months before January 1 of the tax year. Use the assessor's own portal to find nearby sales; it lists recent transactions. Work out the implied market value per square foot for each comp and set it against your assessed market value.

Then wait for the open-rolls period (watch the assessor's site and local news in late spring and early summer) and submit your informal challenge. Bring everything printed and organized. Be specific. "The assessor has my home at $225 per square foot but the five nearest sales averaged $195" beats "I think it's too high" every time.

Want a ready-made framework for that analysis? The TaxFightBack appeal kit has fillable worksheets for exactly this, with Orleans Parish guidance so you're not reinventing the process.

For a sense of how DIY appeals play out elsewhere, the Madison County tax assessor and Lake County property tax pages walk through similar self-help routes in other states.

Frequently asked questions

Where is the Orleans Parish Assessor's office located?

The office sits at 1300 Perdido Street, Room 4E01, inside New Orleans City Hall. The phone number is (504) 658-1300. You can also pull property records and submit exemption applications online at nola.gov. Office hours run Monday through Friday, roughly 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., but confirm current hours on the site before you go.

What is the homestead exemption amount in New Orleans?

Louisiana's homestead exemption removes $7,500 from the assessed value of your primary residence. Since homes are assessed at 10 percent of fair market value, that shelters the first $75,000 of market value from most parish taxes. You apply once and it renews automatically unless you move or ownership changes. The exemption does not cover every levy on your bill.

How do I find my property's assessed value in New Orleans?

Go to nola.gov and search by property address, owner name, or parcel number. The result shows your property data card, including market value, assessed value, and any exemptions on file. For your actual tax bill and payment status, use the Bureau of Treasury portal, also reachable through nola.gov.

What is the deadline to appeal a New Orleans property tax assessment?

File your informal challenge during the annual open-rolls period, usually a 15-day window in late July or early August. If you're unsatisfied, appeal to the Orleans Parish Board of Review in August or September, then to the Louisiana Tax Commission within 10 days of the board's decision. Exact dates get published each year at nola.gov.

How much does it cost to appeal a property tax assessment in Orleans Parish?

The informal review with the assessor and the formal Board of Review protest are both free. If you escalate to the Louisiana Tax Commission, there's a small filing fee (historically under $100 for residential property, but verify current fees with the LTC). Hiring an attorney or appraiser adds cost; a licensed appraisal usually runs $400 to $600 in the New Orleans market.

Can I appeal my New Orleans assessment without a lawyer or contingency firm?

Yes. The informal open-rolls review needs no professional representation. At the Board of Review, plenty of homeowners appear on their own with a comparable-sales analysis. The local process is built for self-representation. Contingency firms typically charge 25 to 40 percent of first-year tax savings; doing it yourself keeps the entire reduction.

Does selling my home trigger a reassessment in Orleans Parish?

Not automatically. Louisiana assessors use sales as market evidence across neighborhoods, but a sale does not reset your assessed value to the sale price the way California's Proposition 13 reassessment does. Your value holds at the current assessment until the next scheduled cycle, which comes at least every four years under state law.

What exemptions are available to seniors and disabled veterans in New Orleans?

Homeowners 65 and older with household income under a threshold set by the assessor can qualify for a special assessment level that freezes their assessed value. Disabled veterans with a 100 percent service-connected disability rating from the VA may qualify for a full property tax exemption on their primary residence under Louisiana Revised Statute 47:1706. Both need an application at the assessor's office.

What assessment ratio does Louisiana use for residential property?

Louisiana's constitution sets the residential assessment ratio at 10 percent of fair market value. A home the assessor values at $300,000 carries a $30,000 assessed value. Commercial property is assessed at 15 percent. Millage rates then apply per $1,000 of assessed value, not per $1,000 of market value.

When are New Orleans property taxes due?

Property taxes are due by December 31 of the tax year with no penalty. They go delinquent on January 1 of the following year, when interest and penalties start to accrue under Louisiana law. Tax bills usually go out from the City of New Orleans Bureau of Treasury in November or December.

How often does Orleans Parish reassess all properties?

Louisiana law requires each assessor to reappraise all property at least once every four years. Orleans Parish has generally followed that schedule. The recent major cycles touching every parcel covered the 2021 and then the 2024-2025 tax years. Individual properties can be updated out-of-cycle when permits are pulled for major renovation or when a systematic error turns up.

What is the difference between the Orleans Parish Assessor and the Bureau of Treasury?

The assessor sets the market value and assessed value of every property and runs the exemptions. The Bureau of Treasury calculates the bill by applying millage rates to assessed values, mails the bills, and collects payments. Missing exemption? Call the assessor. Question about a payment or bill amount? Contact the Bureau of Treasury through nola.gov.

What evidence is most persuasive in a New Orleans property tax appeal?

Recent comparable sales (within six to twelve months of January 1 of the tax year, in your neighborhood, similar size and condition) carry the most weight at the informal review and Board of Review. Document conditions the records miss: flood damage, foundation issues, deferred maintenance. A licensed appraisal is strongest but costs $400 to $600. For most residential appeals, a well-organized comp analysis is enough.

Sources

1. Orleans Parish Assessor's Office (via City of New Orleans), About the Office: Orleans Parish merged seven ward assessors into a single unified assessor in 2010, with the office taking effect January 2011.
2. Louisiana Revised Statutes, Title 47 (Revenue and Taxation), Louisiana Legislature: Louisiana law requires residential property to be assessed at 10 percent of fair market value, reappraisal at least every four years, and sets the homestead exemption at $7,500 of assessed value; RS 47:1706 provides the disabled-veterans exemption.
3. City of New Orleans, Assessor Property Search Portal: The assessor's online portal lists assessed values, property data cards, exemptions on file, open-rolls period dates, and office contact information including (504) 658-1300.
4. Louisiana Association of Tax Administrators, Special Assessment Level (Senior Freeze) information: Qualifying homeowners 65 and older with income below the assessor-set threshold can receive a special assessment level that freezes their assessed value.
5. Louisiana Tax Commission, Official Website: The Louisiana Tax Commission hears property assessment appeals from all parishes; taxpayers must appeal within 10 days of the local Board of Review's decision.
6. City of New Orleans Bureau of Treasury, Property Tax Information: New Orleans property taxes are due by December 31 with no penalty; bills are mailed by the Bureau of Treasury and payments are processed through the city portal.
7. Louisiana Constitution, Article VII, Section 18, Louisiana Legislature: Louisiana's constitution establishes property assessment ratios by class and grants the $7,500 homestead exemption to owner-occupied primary residences.
8. Louisiana Tax Commission, Annual Report and Millage Tables: The LTC publishes annual certified millage rates for Orleans Parish and all other Louisiana parishes; total Orleans Parish millages for most residential properties have run approximately 140 to 160 mills in recent years depending on special districts.
9. Louisiana Revised Statutes RS 47:2323, Louisiana Legislature: RS 47:2323 requires that property assessments reflect fair market value as of January 1 of the tax year.
10. Louisiana Revised Statutes RS 47:1998, Louisiana Legislature: RS 47:1998 governs judicial challenges to property assessments; the assessor's value carries a presumption of correctness and the taxpayer bears the burden of proof.