Property attribute characteristics and their relationship to Parcel Boundaries - Latest

Property Attributes Assessment is a listing of tax property records in the United States, aggregated from each state, county, or city tax authority. The unique and persistent feature IDs for a Property Attribute Assessment and Parcel Boundary record is a Property Attribute ID (PAID) and Parcel ID (PRCLID) respectively. These IDs are different than the PreciselyID, which is the unique and persistent identifier for an addressable location.

How a property is taxed depends on the governing rules of the local tax authority. This starts with defining a parcel which, in the law of real property, signifies a part or portion of land. The definition of a parcel becomes less clear in the context of real estate, where terms such as land parcel, tax parcel, and legal lot are used interchangeably but have different meanings. Land parcels typically deal with ownership, while tax parcels are created for the purpose of collecting taxes based on the assessed value of a property. Tax parcels are assigned an assessor parcel number (APN), mapping the parcel to a legal description of a property (lot) or group of properties. A parcel can consist of one or more lots, which do not need to be contiguous.

A single parcel can have multiple land owners, addresses, or land uses. It is also possible for a property to consist of more than one parcel of land, each of which could be assigned the same landowner, APN, and/or address information. Because of these scenarios, there are multiple records in the Property Attribute products with the same PreciselyID (address) and/or APN, that can link to a single parcel boundary.

Below is an example of three parcels located in Pierce County, Washington. All three parcels share the same address – 1701 E Alexander Ave Tacoma, WA 98421 – but have different characteristics (two of the parcels have associated buildings) and are taxed accordingly. (Note: The data in this table is for illustrative purposes only and may not reflect data currently in the product.)