Hickman County Tennessee
Reach out to County Commissioners, Mayor, and the Property Assessors Office if you have any concerns about the propose changes or want more details. This change may end up being moved to the next step at the next County Commissioners meeting.
I know the Land Use Guide is the big news right now but I want to make everyone aware of some changes that are coming to how your property values are assessed.
Total sales $ jumps from 46 million in 2024 to almost 80 million dollars in 2025!
The way your property values are assessed is changing. Assessments will be more frequent and will often be based on sales of homes in your "neighborhood" as defined by the county.
The median sales price for a property rose from $215,000 to $267,000 in 2025.
Is this ultimately positive or negative for the community? It’s not entirely clear. There are real questions about how indexing will work in practice. The mayor and county assessor should provide a clear, accessible explanation, ideally a recorded video available on the county You tube channel detailing why this change is being made and make themselves available to answer questions from the public about the new system.
The stated reason for the change is to reduce large, sudden tax-value jumps and to smooth property value changes over time. I have concerns about how this will actually work in practice.
The number of improved property sales (not vacant lots) increased by 40 sales in 2025 (not that many).
What is indexing?
Indexing allows the assessor, starting in the second year of a four-year reappraisal cycle, to use actual sales data and apply incremental adjustments to property values in neighborhoods across the county—rather than waiting for the next full reappraisal.
If we look at actual sales data for 2025, we see a significant increase in the price of homes in the county. How would that impact property owners if indexing were applied? Please take time to review the charts below.
Is this a good time to make major changes and become more aggressive regarding property value assessments?
I'm not a "gold bug," but the rise in Hickman County property prices in 2025—combined with gold's 90%+ increase over the last year, suggests to me that moving to a system that allows the property assessor to more easily and aggressively value our property might not work out well for the average long-term Hickman County resident.
Rural areas: thin data and outlier risk
In many parts of rural counties, sales are thin and often not representative of the overall market. One or two outlier sales can drive an entire neighborhood. A handful of high-dollar or unusual sales can push valuations up for neighbors who are not participating in that market at all. "Apples-to-apples" comparisons often break down outside dense subdivisions.
Rural counties often have:
- Slower wage growth
- Higher fixed-income populations
- More elderly, disabled, and land-rich, cash-poor residents
Indexing ties tax valuation more closely to market pressure than to ability to pay.
Indexing increases complexity and reduces transparency
Before (traditional reappraisal):
- Reappraisal was a clear, predictable event
- People expected change at set intervals
- Public hearings and participation were routine
With indexing:
- Changes can happen mid-cycle and feel unexpected
- Adjustments are driven by internal sales modeling
- It becomes much harder for citizens to track, understand, or anticipate changes
In effect, it shifts risk from the county to citizens.
What indexing does for the county
- Protects the county budget
- Protects the tax base
- Reduces financial volatility for the government
But it does so by:
- Transferring volatility and risk to individual taxpayers
- Making assessments more responsive—and more intrusive
Indexing concentrates pressure in fast-growing areas
Even in rural counties, growth is not evenly distributed. It tends to concentrate in a few busy corridors, certain subdivisions, and a handful of especially "desirable" neighborhoods.
With indexing:
- These growth areas are targeted more frequently
- Valuation adjustments are applied more quickly and compound sooner
- Residents in these neighborhoods can feel singled out for supporting county-wide growth
Potential consequences include geographic resentment between different parts of the county, narratives like "we're paying more for everyone else," and erosion of trust and county cohesion.
Appeals may rise—not fall
The expectation: indexing is supposed to reduce the shock of sudden, large assessment changes.
The reality:
- Frequent adjustments lead to more frequent disputes
- More modeling decisions create more points of contention
- Appeals are triggered when changes seem arbitrary or poorly explained
Appeals have real costs: increased staff time, more administrative burden, and greater confusion for property owners.
Should safeguards (guardrails) be put in place?
Potential guardrails include:
- A minimum sales count before applying an index, so there is enough reliable data
- Outlier protections, such as trimmed means or median-only values
- Caps on maximum annual change, especially for owner-occupied primary residences
- Clear public notice, including maps and plain-language explanations, so everyone can understand upcoming changes
This table shows the total number of improved property sales by price. We see an astounding 27 sales in the over $500k+ range. But is this really the only driver of the increases we see above?
We can look at the change in median sales price with all sales over $500,000 removed from the data and we still go from $210,000 to $249,000 in 2025. About a 19% increase year over year.
Notes
- Property sales data was taken from CITIZEN ACCESS PORTAL
- You can find audio recordings of county meetings, AI generated outlines, and transcripts here: Hickman County, TN
- If there are any mistakes please email me a correction with evidence and I will update this document and make note of the correction.
- Raw sales data available as a single .csv file:
Embed GitHub - Link to PDF file of the new 4 year plan:
Embed Dropbox - Link to the full meeting audio where this plan was initially brought up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mc3HjglqCIg begins around 24:30 minute mark and 34:00 minute mark.