PropertyTAX.io Evidence Portal
The purpose of this article is to help you navigate and use the Evidence Portal in the most efficient way and help you understand how to use this powerful tool. It may be helpful to use your computer display to see this article as well as your Evidence Portal at the same time.
To gain access to the Evidence Portal, you will first need to complete the survey for the property for which you wish to upload evidence. Please take a look below for a screenshot of the survey. The question below, outlined in blue, must be answered “Yes” to make the portal available.
Once you have completed the survey and submitted it by clicking the blue button “Submit Survey” you will see the following section appear on your Dashboard:
If you preview to watch a video walk-through, you can click the play button below.
Getting Started
You can click the “Open Evidence Portal” to open the portal. The portal has three sections, as seen below:
We will expand on each section individually, but here is an overview.
Comments or notes you would like to share about the property with your Agent and/or with the Central Appraisal District that would be helpful for your case.
Photos: Use this section to upload photos that will help represent the overall condition of your property.
Repair Wizard: Use the wizard to create repair issues where you can describe the necessary repairs and upload quotes for the work that needs to be done or invoices for work that was completed after January 1 of this year.
Section 1: Comments to the Agent
Here, you can put in information concerning the property's overall condition, repairs that need to be done, or any issues that you feel would prevent you from selling your property for the value the CAD has on your notice that cannot be described with photos or estimates.
It’s important that this information be as concise as possible. When your agent is in the ARB hearing or working the case with the Central Appraisal District informally, we only have a few minutes to present this evidence.
Things such as:
The kitchen was gutted and unusable on Jan 1 due to a fire, and an insurance claim has been filed.
See photos of fire damage in the laundry room.
There is extensive wood rot, and there has been NO updating since the house was built in 1990.
The appraisal district is looking for any information they would not be aware of, such as any damage, flood, or fire.
Section 2: Photo Wizard
The photo wizard is used to upload photos of your property by location with descriptions that provide an overall condition of your property. There are a couple of different approaches you can use to upload photos:
Upload all photos into the Unassigned section, and then you can drag and drop them into the appropriate location or use the drop-down menu to assign them to a location.
Select the location from the left menu (5) and then upload the photos for that location.
Wizard Layout
Add a new location for photos. We have provided the most common ones, but feel free to add your own if you believe the photos will help us lower the value.
You rearrange the order of the locations to change how they appear on the report. You can edit the location name or delete the location if necessary.
This will open a dialog box to allow you to drag and drop photos into the selected section or open your computer's file explorer to select photos to upload.
This is the unassigned photo location; you can upload all photos here and then move them to the proper location. This can make it easier if you have several photos to upload for different locations.
These are the locations (areas) within the home or on the property. Select the location to upload photos directly to that location and add descriptions for each photo (required) as well as a brief description of the location itself (required)
If you are going to take your photos using a cell phone – PLEASE READ FIRST.
Before taking all your photos, it is important to understand that most digital cameras in cell phones have a feature called Geo-Location. This embeds information such as longitude and latitude and the cellphone's orientation into the photo. So, depending on the orientation of the cell phone, it’s possible for your photos to show upside down.
So, we recommend that you take a single photo noting the orientation of your phone and upload it to see if it will upload in the proper orientation. If the photo uploads upside down, then rotate the cell phone in the other direction and take another test photo.
We highly recommend that you take your photos in landscape mode, where your cell phone is held horizontally.
If you have already taken photos that do not load properly, you can remove the EXIF data (location, as mentioned above) online for free using the following link: https://www.imgonline.com.ua/eng/delete-exif.php
First Step – Adding Photos
Select the location on the left (#5) or the Unassigned Photos (#4) to set the location where the photos will be added, and then click the “Add Photo(s)” button (#3) to open the dialog box.
From here, you can either Drag-n-Drop photos to be added to the selected location or click the “browse files” link to open the file explorer. In the file explorer, you can navigate to the location of your photos and select them from there.
After the photos have been selected and uploaded, you will see the following screen with your photos added to the location you selected: See Below.
You can select one or more photos to be deleted. There is also a Select/Unselect All button.
Add or edit the description for this photo. A brief description is required for all photos.
Click and hold here to drag the photo to another location listed in the location menu on the left.
Open the Edit Menu
Edit Menu: from here, you have the following options:
- Edit the description of the photo.
- Delete the photo.
- Select the photo for bulk deletion.
- Select the location to move the photo to.
Open the dialog box to edit the description for the photo.
Photos in the “Unassigned Photos” location will not appear on the report or be available for the agents to review until they have been assigned a location.
Once you have uploaded your photos and assigned them to the proper locations, you can click the location button on the left location menu to view and edit the photos in that location.
The current location is highlighted in dark blue.
Description of the current location (required).
Description of the photo (required).
Shows the report that you have created using the wizard.
Requirements
Each location must have a description, as shown in #2. Please provide a description of this area and why you feel it is important for the appraisal district to be aware of this issue.
Each photo must also have a description of it, as shown in #3, so take photos that highlight a specific issue and describe it the best you can.
If the location description is not provided, none of the photos will appear in the report, and if a photo description is missing, that photo will not appear on the report.
Once you have uploaded all of your photos, assigned them to a location, and added a location description and a note for each photo, you can review the report by clicking on the “View Report” (#4) button at the top of the screen.
Section 3: Repair Wizard
The Repair Wizard allows you to upload quotes, invoices, or insurance documents to inform the appraisal district of any needed repairs that would have impacted your sales price on January 1st of this year.
Requirements
The issue must have been present on Jan 1 of the evaluation year; if it was fixed prior to Jan 1 of this year, it cannot be used, as it would not have affected the sales prices on Jan 1. That is the date that the county uses as the effective date of their market values.
The appraisal district is looking for issues that would have significantly impacted the sales price on Jan 1 of this year and would cost $2,500 or more to repair.
They also require that we provide either an estimate to show the repair cost or an invoice showing the repair was made after Jan 1 of this year.
If you are unable to get an estimate to support the cost of the repair, then use the photo section, section #2, to show the needed repair(s).
Using the Repair Wizard
Add a repair issue to your report. (Detailed how-to description is below these 8 steps).
Save all repair wizard information.
Select the repair issue.
The description of the needed repair (required) goes here.
The cost of the repair on the estimate/invoice. If you have more than one estimate/invoice per issue, then this value should be a total for all costs associated with this repair issue.
Upload estimate/invoice/insurance claim documentation for this repair issue.
Action buttons to:
- Edit the document information.
- View the uploaded document.
- Delete the document from this repair issue.
- Show information about the uploaded document.
View the report for all sections.
The first step is to add a repair issue; you can begin the process by clicking the “Add Repair Issue” (#1) button. This will open a dialog box:
Enter a brief description (#1 required) indicating the issue, such as “Roof,” “Foundation,” or “Pool Repairs,” and then click the checkbox (#2 required) to confirm that this repair would have affected the sales price on Jan 1 of this year. Now click the “Create Issue” (#3) button to create the repair issue.
Once you have added a description, entered the total cost of the repair, and uploaded at least one document, you can then click the save button to save the repair issue to your account.
There is also a walk-through video you can watch.