A Marshall County property owner appealed the 2025 assessed value for 2514 Hillcrest Avenue, telling the Property Tax Assessment Board of Appeals that she believes the assessment significantly overstates market value.

Petitioner Jenny Becksheby, the homeowner, said she and her husband built the house beginning in 2004 and finished in 2005 and that the property has been repeatedly assessed above what she believes it could sell for. “I truly believe that our house would not sell for $800,000. I think that we would be happy to get $600,000 if we put the house up for sale,” Becksheby said. She submitted an appraisal the day before the hearing that gives an opinion of market value of $670,000 and the document was marked in the record as the petitioner’s exhibit.

The county representative, identified in the hearing as Peter Paul of the Marshall County assessor’s office, explained why the county’s valuation rose for the 2025 assessment year. Paul said annual market adjustments based on recent sales activity plus updated local cost and depreciation schedules produced an initial 2025 valuation near $836,000; after review the county offered to settle this appeal at $699,300, the value used in the prior year. Paul also noted the appraisal the petitioner submitted includes language and dates that make its target effective date unclear: the report’s cover lists an effective date of Jan. 1, 2023, while other pages bear October 2025 markings.

Becksheby described neighborhood conditions she says depress her property’s marketability — an adjacent home that has been vacant and in disrepair for many years, multiple properties with vehicles stored on lawns, and building materials piled in yards. She told the board the lot next to her recently sold for $40,000 and asked for “a fair look at what we could really sell the property for.”

Paul told the board that, while county comp reports indicate higher indicated values, he believed the county’s offer to settle at the prior-year figure of $699,300 better reflected market conditions for Plymouth as of Jan. 1, 2025. He described the petitioner’s appraisal as “retrospective in nature” because of its Jan. 1, 2023 effective date on the report and said county valuations used more recent market data.

The board marked the petitioner’s appraisal as an exhibit and closed the hearing record; the transcript does not record a final board decision.

No formal vote or written disposition appears in the hearing transcript. The record reflects the parties’ evidence and argument, including the petitioner’s appraisal (Exhibit 1), county market analyses, and testimony about neighborhood conditions and effective‑date issues for the appraisal.