Anchorage homeowners wanted every big assessment rechecked. They got a narrower fix

Some Anchorage homeowners opened their 2026 assessment cards to find their homes valued as much as 40 percent higher than the year before, on houses where nothing had been built or renovated. Three Assembly members proposed rechecking all of it. The Assembly passed something smaller.

The original measure, from Assembly Members Scott Myers, Keith McCormick and Jared Goecker, would have sent the municipal assessor back through every property whose value rose more than 8 percent, with corrections allowed to run only downward. Where a value jumped more than 20 percent on a house that hadn't physically changed, the measure would have treated that as an error to start with, putting the burden on the city rather than the owner.

The assessor's office argues the year was not the outlier homeowners took it for. Values changed by an average of 4.3 percent, and about a third of properties went down. But roughly one in ten moved by more than 10 percent, and those are the owners who filled the phone lines.

What the city did instead was narrower. A targeted review of four neighborhoods, Goldenview Park, Sahalee, Lookout Landing and Leary Bay, produced lower notices for about 660 homes. That is under 1 percent of the roll.

The Board of Equalization took in 1,953 appeals.