How to read a Tennessee property assessment card (and what it gets wrong)

Updated August 29, 2026. Written by the JB PARCEL team.

Every field on a parcel card traces back to the county assessor's record, the CAMA card, built for one purpose: taxing the property fairly relative to its neighbors. That purpose explains both why the data is so useful and where it quietly misleads.

Values

• Appraised value is the assessor's estimate of market value as of the last county-wide reappraisal, which happens every four to six years. In a fast market it lags. In a flat market it is close.
• Land value and improvement value split the appraisal between dirt and buildings. The ratio is the single most useful number on the card for an investor: a lot where land is more than half the total is a teardown or redevelopment candidate, which is exactly what our Underimproved filter looks for.
• Assessed value is the appraisal times the state ratio: 25 percent residential and farm, 40 percent commercial. Tax is charged on this number.

The building

• Year built is usually the original construction year. A 1940 house with a 2019 gut renovation still says 1940. Some counties carry an "effective year" that reflects remodels; most do not publish it.
• Square footage is finished living area measured from the outside, which is why it often runs a little larger than a listing's interior measurement. Basements, garages, and porches sit in separate fields when the county publishes them.
• Stories, exterior wall, grade, condition are the appraiser's codes. Grade is construction quality; condition is wear. A grade C, condition Fair house is the one you can buy right.
• Improvement type says what kind of structure: single family, duplex, mobile home, commercial. Knox, Hamilton, and Shelby publish none of the building fields in their free data, and the card says so rather than showing blanks.

The lot

Deeded acreage comes from the deed; calculated acreage comes from the GIS polygon. When they disagree by more than a few percent, something is off: an old survey, a road taking, a mapping error. Ask before you price the land by the acre. Land use and class tell you how the assessor sees the property, which is not the same as zoning. A vacant residential lot can be zoned commercial.

Ownership

The owner name is the name on the last recorded deed the assessor has processed, usually a few weeks to a few months behind the Register of Deeds. The mailing address is where the tax bill goes. If it differs from the property address, you have an absentee owner; if the name ends in LLC or Trust, you have an entity. Both are on the card as badges.

Where the card is wrong

Three places, reliably. First, recent sales: the card shows the last sale the assessor recorded, so a sale from last month may not be there yet. Second, renovations done without permits never reach the card, so year built and condition understate the house. Third, anything the county does not publish, which varies by county and is why we label each missing field with the county's name instead of a dash.