Denver Commercial Property Tax Consultant
I’m Charlie Young, a Denver-area commercial property tax consultant with thirteen years at the nation’s largest property tax consultancies, most recently as a Managing Director, before founding Strategic Valuation Advisors in Highlands Ranch in 2026. Denver runs the alternate protest procedure in reappraisal years: Notices of Valuation mail about May 1, protests are due June 1 from the 2027 cycle, assessor determinations mail by August 15, and County Board of Equalization petitions run to September 15. Every Denver appeal I take is argued by me, on a contingency fee of 8% to 20% set per property by its annual tax bill and fixed in writing before you sign, after a Free Assessment Review that says plainly when an appeal is not worth filing.
Where I Sit, and Who Does the Work
The office is at 1745 Shea Center Drive in Highlands Ranch (Douglas County, on the south side of the Denver metro). Hearings on Denver property happen in Denver, and I appear at them. The firm is one principal by design: I handle the full protest season personally (filings, extensions, hearings, and business personal property protests), and the backup practitioner who would appear if I could not is named in your engagement letter before you sign it. No case reaches a hearing without the person who built it in the room.
Research is how I show my work rather than ask you to trust it: a benchmark database of 19,939 Colorado commercial properties compiled from county assessor rolls, 8,058 state Board of Assessment Appeals cases analyzed, and the 2025 county-board results, county by county. Denver is the largest county cohort in the database.
Denver’s Appeal Calendar, Date by Date
Denver’s population is over 300,000, so in reappraisal years it uses the alternate protest and appeal procedure that § 39-5-122.7, C.R.S. requires of every county above that line (Adams, Arapahoe, Jefferson, Douglas, Boulder, El Paso, Larimer and Weld as well), and that any other county may elect for the year. The result is the same June 1 protest deadline as the rest of Colorado, with a longer back half. The 2027 values rest on market conditions as of June 30, 2026; that evidence is already fixed.
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~May 1, 2027Notices of Valuation mailReal property notices start the clock. From 2027 the protest window is barely four weeks.
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June 1, 2027Assessor protest deadlineMoved up from June 8 by SB26-046, effective with the 2027 cycle; the 2026 deadline was June 8.
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July 15Income-and-expense disclosureAppealing to the CBOE triggers mandatory income-and-expense disclosure for income-producing property, due by a hard July 15 deadline in alternate-procedure counties, months before the hearing. Decide what story the data tells before you escalate.
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By August 15Assessor determinationsNotices of Determination mail by August 15 under the alternate procedure, against the end of June in regular-procedure counties.
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September 15County Board of Equalization deadlineDenver’s CBOE petition deadline; regular-procedure counties close on July 15. CBOE is an evidentiary hearing. Go in with the valuation case already built.
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Sept 1 (Dec 1 in alternate-procedure counties) or +30 days if notified off-scheduleBAA, district court, or arbitrationThree venues, one deadline: the later of September 1, December 1 in alternate-procedure counties (Denver among them), or 30 days after the decision if it was mailed off the regular schedule (SB26-046, effective August 12, 2026). Past the CBOE, the value cannot be adjusted more than 5% above the CBOE’s figure (§ 39-8-108(5)(a.5), C.R.S.).
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Up to 2 years backAbatement & refund petitionsAbatement petitions reach back up to two years for taxes levied erroneously or illegally.
Business personal property runs its own calendar: declarations April 15, notices June 15, protests June 30 (July 15 and July 31 from 2027 in counties using the alternate protest procedure, the nine over 300,000 in a reappraisal year), with the CBOE step moving to September 15 in alternate-procedure counties. Schedules at or below $56,000 per county in 2026 (a flat $58,000 from 2027 under SB26-116) owe nothing and file nothing. Full detail in the Colorado guide and the deadline table.
What Denver’s County Board Actually Decided
Denver’s county board decided 2,569 commercial petitions in 2025. I compiled the outcomes from the county’s own decision records, which classify every parcel; the full Front Range analysis is here.
| Property Type | Success Rate | Median Winning Reduction | Decided |
|---|---|---|---|
| All commercial | 23.6% | 9.8% | 2,569 |
| Hotels | 30.4% | 9.5% | 46 |
| Industrial & warehouse | 25.3% | 8.9% | 768 |
| Apartments (multifamily) | 24.8% | 6.5% | 416 |
| Office, retail & mixed-use | 22.1% | 11.4% | 1,339 |
Denver homeowners won 51% of decided single-family petitions, double the commercial figure, because nobody waives a homeowner’s hearing for them. The clearest lesson in the 2025 record is whether anyone argued the case. Rates are cohort statistics, not predictions for any property.
How a Denver Building Ranks Against Its Peers
The free assessment check ranks a Denver property against Denver peers of the same type and size band (value per square foot for offices and industrial buildings, per key for hotels, per unit for 50-plus-unit apartment communities), from the latest certified county assessor roll. The Denver office and industrial cohorts, and the median in each:
| Property Type | Size Band | Denver Cohort | Median Value / SF |
|---|---|---|---|
| Office | under 10k SF | 789 | $261 |
| Office | 10k–50k SF | 378 | $195 |
| Office | 50k–150k SF | 153 | $169 |
| Office | 150k+ SF | 108 | $153 |
| Industrial | under 10k SF | 952 | $211 |
| Industrial | 10k–50k SF | 935 | $159 |
| Industrial | 50k–150k SF | 297 | $125 |
| Industrial | 150k+ SF | 104 | $89 |
Assessor actual value divided by assessor building square footage, compiled July 2026; aggregated statistics only, no client data. Denver hotels (96 in the lookup) rank on value per key against county, state, and quality tier. A high rank within your own county and size band is a screening signal, not proof; what the screen cannot see (income in place, obsolescence, how the assessor modeled your building) is the analysis I do by hand.
The same over-assessment costs a different amount block by block
Only market value is on trial in an appeal, but the levy decides what a win is worth. Some Denver districts sit near 75 mills; parts of Adams County exceed 120. At 100 mills, every $1,000,000 of overstated market value costs $25,000 a year on commercial-classed property (assessed at 25% in 2026) and $26,000 on industrial-classed property (26%), and a 2027 reduction normally rides into 2028 untouched. The county’s number carries no presumption of correctness, and escalation risk is capped by statute.
The Hotel Case That Was Won On Site
The largest hotel result of my career was a Denver-area full-service hotel. The prior consultant had never set foot on the property; the valuation ran straight off the income statement. Touring the operation with the stakeholders and dissecting the income showed that a significant share of the food-and-beverage business was handled off-site, income that does not belong in the capitalized stream. Savings ran $630,000 a year, four years running: more than $2.5 million in all. How I work Colorado hotel cases.
That engagement was at a prior national firm. SVA’s first full Colorado appeal cycle as a firm is 2027, and results from SVA engagements will be published with client consent.
The Fee, Per Property, Before You Sign
The fee is a contingency percentage of realized tax savings, tiered by the property’s own annual tax bill: a building with under $200,000 of annual tax pays 20% of the savings; over $2 million pays 8%. Every property is tiered on its own and quoted per property, in writing, before signature. Five or more properties get a written schedule, still priced per property, at or below the published matrix. No retainers, no minimums, and no fee if the taxes do not go down; court filing fees and third-party experts pass through at cost with prior approval.
A Denver building with a $95,000 tax bill, over-assessed by 10%, recovers about $9,500 a year. The fee is about $1,900; you keep $7,600, every year of the cycle.
While a file is active you receive a written status memo every month, and a written checkpoint at each of three points: before anything is filed, before any settlement is accepted, and after every decision. Nothing is filed without your written instruction. Full terms: how an engagement works.
Already have a firm? Keep them. The Free Assessment Review costs nothing either way, and the memo is written so your own team or your firm of record can file and defend each finding without me. If you do move a file, it is one signature on a new agent-of-record authorization; there is nothing to unwind first.
Is your Denver assessment defensible?
Send me the notice of value. It is acknowledged within one business day, and you get a written read within one week of my receiving the notice. For business personal property I need two things: a signed agent authorization so I can pull the full property record card from the county, and your fixed-asset ledger; then a written declaration memo within 30 days of receiving the county's property record card and your fixed-asset ledger, or a written date ahead of your county's personal-property protest deadline (in Colorado, June 30, or July 31 from 2027 in alternate-procedure counties), whichever is sooner. If there is no case, that answer is free too.
Related: should you appeal your Colorado commercial assessment · Colorado appeal guide · 2025 county-board results · appeal deadlines · business personal property declaration review