An Assessor is a government employee who finds the value of properties and other assets for tax and insurance purposes.
The assessor’s office is responsible for coming up with the assessed value of real estate property in a municipality, for the purpose of assessing property taxes.
Assessors may have other roles, but this is the main one. Considering that assessors have to determine a value of every piece of real property in their district, it can certainly be an overwhelming task.
They also must keep all records of this inventory up to date as property changes hands and building projects and so forth may change the value of the property.
Assessors in some states are not required to have a special certification, but in most states it is mandatory. Assessors seek to find a formula that works for each neighborhood’s property values, and these tend to be an approximation of fair market value which is good enough for most purposes.
The assessor’s research includes averaging the values of real estate listings for a given area. Assessors must incorporate various documents from the municipality such as building permits and other information related to real estate property values.