Lorain County Board of Revision

If you think the Lorain County Auditor has your property valued too high, the Board of Revision is where you say so. Filing is free, the form is DTE 1, and the deadline is March 31. Below is how it works in Lorain County specifically; the law behind it is the same in all 88 Ohio counties.

Filing in Lorain County

Where the complaint goes	Lorain County Administration Building, 226 Middle Ave., Room 200, Elyria, OH 44035-5641
Electronic filing	None. Lorain County lists its filing methods and no online portal is among them.
Fax	440-329-5223
Phone	440-329-5207
Notarization	Required on a paper form.
County rules of procedure	Not published on the county's site. Call 440-329-5207
Official county page	Lorain County Board of Revision

Read off Lorain County's own published pages on 2026-08-29. County procedures change; the county's page is the authority, and this one is not.

Notarization. The county states the complaint must be signed and notarized.

Worth knowing about Lorain County

Lorain publishes filing by regular U.S. mail only, and states that the date of the postmark is the date of filing.
The Auditor publishes a Board of Revision hearing schedule and a public case-search tool.

The deadline

R.C. 5715.19 requires a complaint for a given tax year to be filed with the county auditor on or before March 31 of the following tax year, or the close of first-half tax collection for that year, whichever is later. In practice the window runs January 1 to March 31 and challenges the prior year's value.

Counties differ on what "filed" means. Some treat a March 31 postmark as timely; others require the complaint in hand by March 31. Check Lorain County's page before you rely on the mail in the last week of March.

What decides these cases

The burden is entirely on you. The county's value carries no presumption of correctness, but if you fail to prove a different value, the value goes back to the county's number. Attacking the county's figure without supplying a defensible one of your own is a loss, not a draw. The strongest evidence is a recent arm's-length sale of the property itself, then a competent appraisal with the appraiser testifying, then a rigorous analysis of comparable sales. Comparing the Auditor's assessed values of neighboring parcels does not work, and neither does an asking price or an argument that the taxes are too high.

The full guide to Ohio Board of Revision complaints covers the statute, the one-complaint-per-triennium rule, the $50,000 line that lets a school board into your hearing, the technical defects that get complaints dismissed, and the 30-day appeal to the Board of Tax Appeals or the court of common pleas.

Start with the record

Before you argue about the value, check what the county actually has on the parcel: the current assessed value, how it moved across reappraisal and update cycles, the recorded sales nearby, and whether the building record the value rests on is accurate. A value resting on square footage you do not have is the easiest case there is.

Look up a Lorain County parcel

Lorain County property records on PlatBook

Common questions

What is the deadline to file a Lorain County Board of Revision complaint?

Under R.C. 5715.19 a complaint for a given tax year must be filed with the county auditor on or before March 31 of the following year, or the close of first-half tax collection, whichever is later. In practice the Lorain County window runs January 1 through March 31 and challenges the prior year's value. Confirm the current cycle on the county's own Board of Revision page.

Where do I file a Board of Revision complaint in Lorain County?

Lorain County Administration Building, 226 Middle Ave., Room 200, Elyria, OH 44035-5641.

Does a Lorain County Board of Revision complaint have to be notarized?

The county states the complaint must be signed and notarized.

Does filing cost anything in Lorain County?

Filing a DTE 1 complaint with a county Board of Revision carries no filing fee. The costs, if any, are evidence: an appraisal, or a contractor's estimate for structural defects.