Pittsburgh apartment property taxes are calculated by multiplying a building’s Allegheny County assessment, which is still based on 2012 market values, by the combined millage of the City of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Public Schools and Allegheny County, which together total about 26.56 mills for 2026. Because the base year has not changed in more than a decade, the assessment on most apartment buildings bears little relation to today’s market value, which makes the appeal process, the county’s common level ratio and the court-ordered reassessment coming later this decade unusually important for owners.
The sections below explain how each piece is set, what changed for the 2026 tax year, how appeals work under the new September deadline and what the reassessment ordered in August 2026 means for apartment owners in Pennsylvania’s second-largest city. Pittsburgh, the seat of Allegheny County, counted 302,971 residents at the 2020 Census.
Assessments still rest on 2012 values
Allegheny County’s Office of Property Assessments sets the value of every parcel in the county, including every apartment building in Pittsburgh. Its property assessments page states that the current base year is 2012, with an effective date of value of January 1, 2012, and that the base year has been used for tax year 2013 and every year since. The last countywide reassessment took effect in 2013.
The county is direct about the consequence: the assessed values shown in its parcel search do not reflect current-year market values. For a building that has been renovated, re-leased at higher rents or simply carried along by more than a decade of market change, the assessment on the tax bill is a 2012 figure, not a 2026 one.
When an assessment can change mid-cycle
The base year does not freeze every assessment. The county notes that a school district or municipality occasionally requests an interim assessment on new construction or major improvements, and that building permits, demolitions and subdivisions can also trigger a review. An owner who adds units, converts space to apartments or completes a substantial renovation should expect the county to revisit that parcel even though no general reassessment has taken place.
The 2026 millage behind Pittsburgh apartment property taxes
Three taxing bodies levy the bulk of the property tax on a typical Pittsburgh parcel, and all three rates have moved recently:
- City of Pittsburgh: 9.67 mills. The city’s property tax worksheet lists the 2026 rate as 9.67 mills. WESA reported that City Council raised the rate by 20% for 2026, from 8.06 mills.
- Pittsburgh Public Schools: 10.457 mills. WESA reported that the school board approved the new rate for 2026, an increase of about 2% from the 10.25 mills levied in 2024 and 2025.
- Allegheny County: 6.43 mills. The county raised its rate from 4.73 mills to 6.43 mills for 2025, an increase of 1.7 mills, and the rate is unchanged for 2026.
Added together, those three levies come to 26.557 mills. One mill is $1 of tax per $1,000 of assessed value, so the combined rate works out to about 2.66% of assessed value.
The city also levies two voter-approved special taxes described in its tax FAQs: a 0.25-mill Carnegie Library tax approved in November 2011 and a 0.50-mill parks tax approved in November 2019. Owners should check their bill to see how those amounts are shown alongside the general city rate.
A worked example
Consider an apartment building with a 2012-base assessment of $1,500,000:
- City tax at 9.67 mills: $14,505
- School tax at 10.457 mills: $15,685.50
- County tax at 6.43 mills: $9,645
- Total of the three main levies: $39,835.50
Under the 2025 city rate of 8.06 mills, the same building’s city tax would have been $12,090, so the 2026 city increase alone added $2,415 to the bill. Over two years, the county and city increases together added about $4,965 to the bill compared with 2024 rates, before counting the school increase.
Putting all three changes together shows the full two-year effect. At 2024 rates, the combined millage was 23.04 mills (8.06 city, 10.25 school and 4.73 county), which on a $1,500,000 assessment produced $34,560 in tax. At 2026 rates, the same assessment produces $39,835.50, an increase of $5,275.50, or about 15%, with no change at all in the building’s assessed value. For an owner who underwrote a purchase in 2023 or 2024 using the then-current bill, that is a cost increase that rent growth has to absorb. Changes of that size flow directly into net operating income, which is why owners re-running their numbers after a rate change often use a tool like our NOI calculator to see the effect on value.
Paying city and school taxes
The City of Pittsburgh bills both its own real estate tax and the Pittsburgh Public Schools tax. The city’s real estate tax page lists the following schedule:
- A 2% discount for paying in full by the discount deadline, which the page lists as February 10. For 2026, the mayor proposed moving that deadline to February 17.
- Full payment at face value, or the first installment, due by February 27.
- The second installment due April 30.
- The third installment due July 31.
The city warns that if the February deadline is missed, the entire year’s taxes become due and payable in full, with interest charged from March 1. On a bill approaching $20,000 for city and school taxes combined, the 2% discount is worth roughly $400 a year, enough to justify paying early when cash flow allows. County taxes are billed separately by Allegheny County.
The new appeal calendar
Appeals are where most apartment owners in Allegheny County have the greatest control over their tax bill, and the timing changed recently.
Allegheny County Ordinance 06-24-OR, adopted June 4, 2024, moved the annual appeal deadline. For tax year 2025, the deadline moved from March 31, 2025 to October 1, 2024. Beginning with tax year 2026, appeals are due September 1 of the year before the tax year, and filing is limited to the 60 days before that deadline.
The county’s Board of Property Assessment Appeals and Review page confirms that the 2027 annual appeal submission period ran from July 1, 2026 through September 1, 2026. That window has closed, and the next one will be for tax year 2028. Owners used to the old March deadline should note the shift: an appeal must now be filed months before the tax year it affects begins. The March 31 deadline still applies to applications for tax exemptions, but not to value appeals.
What happens after filing
The Board of Property Assessment Appeals and Review, known as BPAAR, hears first-level appeals at 542 Forbes Avenue, Room 328. Hearing notices for commercial appeals are mailed at least 21 days in advance; residential notices go out at least 14 days ahead. Hearings for tax year 2027 were scheduled for weeks in October and November 2026.
An owner who disagrees with the board’s decision can take the case to a second stage, the Board of Viewers, as the Pittsburgh law firm Tucker Arensberg has described the process. For income-producing property such as apartments, reductions are generally supported with the property’s income and expense statements. Higher vacancy, rent concessions or rising operating costs can all reduce the value a board is willing to find.
How the common level ratio sets the assessment in an appeal
Because assessments are fixed to 2012 values, an appeal does not simply compare the assessment to today’s market value. Instead, the board determines the property’s current market value and multiplies it by the common level ratio, a statewide measure of how assessments compare with sales prices in each county.
According to the BPAAR page, the common level ratio for Allegheny County for tax year 2027 is 49.3%, applied in appeals beginning in September 2026. Tucker Arensberg reported that the ratio was 50.14% for 2026, down from 52.7% for 2025. The trend matters: a building with the same market value would carry an implied assessment about 6.5% lower under the 2027 ratio than under the 2025 ratio, simply because sale prices across the county have kept rising relative to the frozen 2012 values.
Here is how that plays out. Suppose the board finds that an apartment building has a current market value of $3,000,000. At the 2027 ratio of 49.3%, the implied assessment is $1,479,000. If the building is currently assessed at $1,800,000, the owner has a case for a reduction of about $321,000 in assessed value, which at 26.557 mills would lower the three main levies by roughly $8,525 a year.
The ratio cuts both ways. A falling ratio helps owners whose buildings are over-assessed relative to current value, but it also gives school districts and municipalities an incentive to file their own appeals against properties whose 2012 assessments are well below current value times the ratio. A building that sold recently at a high price is an obvious candidate, because the sale price provides ready evidence of current value.
The limits on targeting apartment buildings
Taxing bodies cannot single out apartments for increase appeals. In Valley Forge Towers Apartments N, LP v. Upper Merion Area School District, decided July 5, 2017, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court held under the state constitution’s uniformity clause that all real property within a taxing jurisdiction is a single class, and that taxing bodies may not intentionally or systematically appeal only commercial properties. The appellants in that case were apartment owners.
The ruling did not stop school districts from filing appeals. It requires them to use criteria, such as a value threshold, that apply to every property type rather than selecting apartment or commercial buildings alone. For Pittsburgh owners, the practical message is that a large apartment building purchased at a price well above its implied assessment can still be appealed by the school district, but only as part of a program that treats other property types the same way.
The court-ordered reassessment
The biggest change on the horizon is a new countywide reassessment. As PublicSource reported, Judge Kenneth Valasek ordered Allegheny County on August 17, 2026 to begin a new reassessment by July 2027 and complete it before June 30, 2032, and to hire a contractor within six months. County Executive Sara Innamorato said the county will comply and will reassess every five years after that. The case was brought by a Churchill homeowner, and a separate reassessment suit involving Pittsburgh Public Schools is on appeal at Commonwealth Court.
When new values take effect, they will replace the 2012 base year for every parcel. Pennsylvania law limits the revenue windfall. As the Allegheny Institute’s summary of the millage rules after a reassessment explains, Act 71 of 2005 requires the county and municipalities to roll their millage back to a revenue-neutral level, with up to 5% more allowed only by a separate vote, while school districts follow Act 1 of 2006 and are held to a state index. Total collections are therefore constrained, but individual buildings can still see their share of the total change significantly. Apartment buildings whose values have risen faster than the county average since 2012 would see their share of the tax burden increase, while those that have lagged would see it fall.
Meanwhile, both the county executive’s and the mayor’s proposed 2027 budgets, presented in fall 2026, include no tax increase. Both remain proposals until adopted.
Taxes at sale and new construction incentives
Realty transfer tax
Transfer tax is a meaningful cost at sale. Allegheny County’s table of realty transfer tax rates shows a combined 5% for most city parcels: 1% to the Commonwealth, 3% to the City of Pittsburgh and 1% to the Pittsburgh School District. The 5% rate has applied to commercial deeds since April 1, 2020. City parcels in the Baldwin-Whitehall School District pay 4.5% in total. On a $3,000,000 apartment sale, the full 5% amounts to $150,000, and who pays it is a negotiated term of the purchase agreement.
Longer abatements for new projects
Pennsylvania’s Local Economic Revitalization Tax Assistance program, known as LERTA, lets taxing bodies phase in the added value of improvements in designated areas. Ryan, a tax advisory firm, reported that the state budget enacted November 12, 2025 raised the maximum abatement period from 10 years to 20 years for Philadelphia County, Allegheny County and the City of Pittsburgh. A statement from Councilman Bobby Wilson noted that the downtown LERTA he authored picks up the longer term automatically. For existing building owners, the main consequence is competitive: new or converted apartment buildings in LERTA areas can carry lower property taxes for longer than before.
What this means for owners
Allegheny County’s system rewards owners who understand its calendar and its quirks. A practical checklist:
- Re-run the numbers at 2026 rates. The city’s 9.67 mills, the school district’s 10.457 mills and the county’s 6.43 mills together add up to about 2.66% of assessed value, and the city and county increases alone have added meaningfully to bills since 2024.
- Compare your assessment with current value times the ratio. If your assessment is above roughly 49.3% of what the building would sell for today, a tax year 2028 appeal may be worth preparing.
- Mark the summer window. Appeals for tax year 2028 are expected to open in July 2027 and close September 1, 2027, following the pattern set by the ordinance. Assemble rent rolls and operating statements in the spring.
- Expect scrutiny after a purchase. A recent sale price well above the implied assessment invites a taxing-body appeal, so buyers should underwrite taxes on purchase price times the ratio, not on the seller’s bill.
- Pay city and school taxes early when practical. The 2% discount is a guaranteed saving.
- Watch the reassessment. New values are not expected before the early 2030s, but the timeline and the methodology the county’s contractor adopts will determine how much of the tax burden shifts to apartment buildings.
For a broader view of conditions across the state, see our Pennsylvania markets page, and for local context, visit our Pittsburgh market page.
