Where it is and who runs it
The portal lives at realestate.alleghenycounty.us. Allegheny County runs it, and it is the official public record of how every property in the county is assessed. If a lender, a court or a government office asks for a property's assessment, this is the source they mean.
Parcel Finder, the site you are reading, is separate. It shows the same public records in a different layout and has no connection to the county.
How to search it
The free search takes two kinds of input.
- An address. The house number and the street name go in separate boxes. Choosing a municipality helps when the street name is a common one, since the county has dozens of Main Streets and Maple Avenues.
- A parcel ID. This is the 16-character lot and block number. The county's help page shows it as
0000 0 00000 0000 00and says leading zeros are filled in for you if you leave them off.
You can't search by owner name on the free site. County Council removed that in 2007, and today name search is offered only to paid subscribers. There is a free way around that through the deed index.
The eight tabs
Once a parcel is open, its record is split across tabs along the top.
- General Information has the owner's name and mailing address, the municipality and school district, what the property is used for, the lot size, the assessed values and the most recent sale.
- Building Information covers the structure: year built, style, living area, rooms, bedrooms, baths, condition, heating and the like.
- Tax Info (E-Bill / E-Pay) lists the county tax for recent years, shows whether each bill was paid, and lets you pay the current one online.
- Owner History lists earlier owners with the date and price of each sale.
- Image is the county's assessment photo.
- Comparables shows the sales the county used to value a home. Commercial properties don't get any.
- Appeal Status shows any assessment appeals on the parcel. During the filing window, the online appeal form is on this tab too.
- Maps shows the parcel on a map.
What it doesn't tell you
Three things trip people up.
The values are not prices. The county says the assessed values on its site "do not reflect current year market values." They are 2012 base-year figures, and most homes sell for a good deal more. More on that here.
The tax tab is only the county's tax. Your municipality and your school district each send a separate bill, and neither appears on the portal.
It won't find properties by owner, as noted above.
The same record, faster
Parcel Finder reads the same county records and puts all of it on one page: owner, values, sale history, taxes and comparables, with the lot outlined on a map. It takes a partial address, a parcel ID with or without the zeros, or a deed's book and page. When you need the county's own page, every property here links straight to it.
Sources
- Allegheny County Real Estate Portal
- Real Estate Portal help page, for the parcel ID format
- Allegheny County: Property Assessments, for the statement on market values
- Allegheny County: Subscription Real Estate Website