Roots.ai — Streamlining the Property Tax Appeal Process

We developed a platform designed to simplify the property tax appeal process. Users begin by entering a property address to uncover the various components that influence its value and compare the tax assessment of their property with those in their neighborhood and county. The platform allows users to compare their property against 10 similar ones, with the ability to deselect properties from the comparison. Detailed instructions guide users through the appeal application process to potentially lower their tax amount.

The project commenced with the creation of design wireframes, which were then transformed into a custom WordPress theme. The Roots.ai team uploaded files containing assessment and tax information to blob storage. Our role involved integrating these files into the database via Azure Data Factory Pipelines. Additionally, we extracted property coordinates using the Google Geocoding API and stored them in our database to reduce dependency on external API requests. A custom WordPress plugin retrieves the data from the database and delivers it to the frontend.

To enhance user experience, we implemented a mobile-adaptive version, integrated Google Street View and Google Place Autocomplete, and customized the Google Maps view. Additional features include a user activation module in the admin panel, a profile page, and a feedback form for profile deactivation.

In the final stages, we integrated RapidAPI to access data not available from county records, such as the most recent sale data and prices. During the release preparation, we uploaded the full dataset, replacing sample data, and discovered duplicates in our database. This was due to some properties having multiple buildings on a single plot. We adjusted our calculations to accurately display the correct values.