TurboAppeal raises $800K, launches service to simplify property tax appeal

by Tessa McLean
November 25, 2014

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Becoming a homeowner is one of the most exciting times in a person’s life. You can finally call a space your own and know that you’ve made an investment in your future. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of extra, and often confusing, expenses that come with homeownership, many that are much higher than expected. One of those is property taxes.
 
Badal Shah was chatting with a friend one day who was describing how tough it had been for him to appeal his property taxes. Shah didn’t know anything about the process, so he tried to make an appeal on his own home. Once he embarked on the process, he quickly realized how difficult and overcomplicated it was, even after deciding to hire a lawyer to help him through it. After leaving his family’s chemical business, he knew he wanted to do something that would really impact people, and he found it in TurboAppeal. 
 
“Everyone is entitled to savings,” Shah said. “For most people, their home is 99% of their assets and they’re all entitled to savings. If they’re not appealing, they should.”
 
TurboAppeal takes a tiresome process of gathering documents and heading to the county accessor and automates the entire system in under 30 seconds. You simply fill out your name, address, email and phone number to sign-up. Once you sign the agreement emailed to you by TurboAppeal, they get to work on your savings and even file everything for you. Once they figure out your savings, they take a percentage of that savings for the first year. After that, you’re simply saving money. 
 
Shah explains that only 50 percent of Cook County residents appeal their property taxes (and even less nationwide), but 70 percent of properties are overassessed. And if you choose a lawyer at random who doesn’t compile the right information and make the best case for you, you may not see any savings at all. Especially in large metro areas, that's a lot of savings to take advantage of. 
 
“We want to disrupt that [property tax appeal] through technology by automating it and improving the likelihood of a successful outcome.”
 
              
 
TurboAppeal finds an average of $1346 savings for properties and Shah insists it’s the most cost-effective way to file. The service is currently only available in Cook County, but they plan to add several more counties in Illinois in 2015 and many more nationwide by 2016. 
 
The company launched this month after a successful beta and an impressive $800K round they secured after just one week. Investment came mostly from strategic investors, many whom are in the real estate business and saw a need for the service. 
 
TurboAppeal plans to add to their four-person team (Shah as CEO, two co-founders, and one software engineer) and hire at least 3-4 more people by mid-January across industries. They’re currently working out of 1871. 

Jobs at TurboAppeal

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