Home › How we verify

How we verify

Primary sources only

A value appears only after we read it on the community's own website or document, on the collecting agency's table (RITA, CCA), or in a County Fiscal Officer document. Lists published by title agencies, realtors or blogs are used only as leads to check, never as a source. Each value links to its source and shows the date we read it. We keep a dated copy of every page and file and record its SHA-256 fingerprint, and the data build fails if a quoted sentence is not in the stored copy.

“Not yet verified”

When we have not read a value from a primary source, the page says so instead of guessing, and links to the community's website when we know it.

Ageing

Values turn amber (“Ageing”) 13 months after they were verified, and are withheld (“Re-verifying”) after 18 months until they are read again. If a source link stops answering for three weekly checks in a row, its values turn amber too. Reports and Pro Passes pause by themselves when more than 20% of values are ageing.

Property tax

Gross (voted) rates are the County's tax year 2025 figures (bills paid in 2026) for each taxing district. Effective rates and tax as a share of market value are the County's tax year 2024 figures, because that is the latest effective-rate table we found. Both are labelled with their tax year.

Water and sewer

“Cleveland Water (all or part)” means some or all of the community lies inside Cleveland Water's mapped service area. “NEORSD (all or part)” means the community appears in the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District's list of communities served in whole or in part. Individual streets can differ.

Corrections and re-checks

Anyone can report a correction. Reports are queued for a re-check against the primary source; nothing changes on the page until the source confirms it. The whole atlas is re-read once a year, and Pro Pass holders get an email listing every value that changed.