The Sherwood Property Tax Line on the Listing Sheet Isn't Your Number

You are scrolling Sherwood listings, comparing what a $325,000 house here looks like against the same money in Cabot or Maumelle. The property tax field reads something like $1,650 a year. You do the mortgage math, feel good about the payment, and move on.

That $1,650 belongs to the seller. On closing day, a rule most Sherwood buyers have never read starts working against you, and by the time your first tax bill lands you are looking at a number the listing never showed.

The rule almost no one reads before they offer

Arkansas Amendment 79 caps how fast your taxable value can grow. For a homestead used as a primary residence, the constitutional text limits any annual increase in assessed value to five percent. For everything else it is ten percent. Both caps run from the last countywide reappraisal.

The cap is generous to the person who has owned the house for a decade. It is silent on what happens when that person sells. Amendment 79's exceptions list is short and specific: "newly discovered real property, new construction, or substantial improvements." The unwritten fourth category is the one that lands on you. When ownership changes, the sheltered taxable value resets toward the current appraisal. Assessors and tax lawyers call it the welcome-stranger effect. Whatever cap protection the seller built up over the years does not travel with the deed.

What Amendment 79 actually gives a Sherwood homeowner

Four benefits stack on the same homestead. The Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration lays them out in its property tax relief page:

• A flat Homestead Property Tax Credit against the ad valorem bill. The legislature raised this from $500 to up to $600 beginning with 2026 tax bills, and the Pulaski County Treasurer's office confirms the $600 figure on its homestead page.
• A 5% annual cap on taxable value growth for a homestead.
• A 10% annual cap for non-homestead real property.
• An assessment freeze available to owners who are 65 or older or disabled, which locks the taxable value at the next assessment date after they qualify.

Three of those four are yours the day you move in, once you file the homestead application with the Pulaski County Assessor. The freeze is portable to your own life stage, not to you from the previous owner. And the 5% cap starts its clock over with your ownership, on top of a taxable value that has already stepped back up.

What the pop-up looks like on a Sherwood house

Here is the arithmetic. Arkansas assesses real property at 20% of appraised value, and the Pulaski County Treasurer confirms that taxes are calculated by multiplying that taxable value by the millage rate, then subtracting the homestead credit. Bills are paid one year in arrears.

The Ownwell trend data for Pulaski County puts the countywide median effective tax rate at 1.04% of market value, with a range from 0.66% in Sweet Home to 1.17% in Alexander, depending on which city, school, and special district lines a parcel sits inside. Sherwood parcels typically fall inside the county's mid-to-upper band.

Applied to a $325,000 purchase:

The seller was paying on a taxable value that Amendment 79 had kept low year after year. You are paying on the full number your contract just printed on the deed. The bigger the gap between the seller's tenure-protected value and the price you paid, the bigger your pop-up. A house held for twelve years through steady appreciation can carry a Year 1 delta of $400 to $900 that never appeared anywhere in the listing feed.

Why two Sherwood houses on similar streets can carry different bills

Effective rate inside Pulaski County is not a single number. The county median sits at 1.04%, but Ownwell's ZIP-level data shows meaningful spread by taxing district. Sherwood parcels are stitched into a set of overlapping city, county, and special-district lines, and the combined millage on a given address is the sum of every district that touches it.

Practically, this means the house on one side of a Sherwood arterial can carry a slightly different combined rate than the house three streets over. When you are running comps, run the tax bill on each candidate address individually rather than trusting a citywide average. The parcel record on the Pulaski County Assessor's site shows every taxing district that applies, and the treasurer's office will confirm the current combined millage on request.

The $600 credit does more on a starter than on a move-up

The credit is a flat-dollar reduction, not a percentage. That is worth reading twice. On a $175,000 first home, $600 lops off roughly a third of the gross ad valorem bill. On a $475,000 move-up, it takes off less than a fifth. As the price climbs, the relief compresses.

For a first-time buyer running the numbers in a Sherwood entry-level pocket, the credit hike from $500 to $600 is real money. For a move-up family stepping into a newer build, the credit is a rounding line, and the pop-up from the seller's old taxable base is the number that actually reshapes the escrow analysis your lender hands you at month twelve.

The calendar most buyers get wrong

If you close in Sherwood this year, four dates matter, and none of them are on your closing disclosure.

1. Closing day. Sign the homestead credit application at the Pulaski County Assessor's office, or online through the assessor's portal, as soon as the deed records. The credit is not automatic. The house has to be identified as your principal residence for the credit to attach to your bill.
2. May 31. Arkansas's assessment deadline for personal property. If you assess late, you carry a 10% penalty on personal property that follows you into the same tax cycle.
3. Mid-May of the following year. Assessment notices arrive in Pulaski County mailboxes, per Ownwell's summary of county practice. This is your window to compare the assessor's appraised value against what you actually paid and, if the numbers diverge in a way that hurts, to file an informal review with the assessor.
4. October 15 of the year after your closing year. Arkansas taxes are billed one year in arrears. A 2026 closing shows up as a 2027 bill. Buyers who forget this get surprised twice: once when there is no bill in Year 1, once when Year 2 arrives at the popped-up number without warning.

Your lender will estimate escrow off whatever the last owner paid, because that is the only number in the system when they set up the account. About twelve to fourteen months in, your servicer will run an escrow analysis, catch the shortfall, and either raise your monthly payment or ask for a lump-sum catch-up. Neither is a surprise you have to accept if you sized the true bill into your offer.

Questions Sherwood buyers ask about the tax line

Does the seller's low tax bill mean I'm overpaying if my Year 1 bill is higher? No. The two numbers are measuring different things. The seller's bill reflects years of Amendment 79 cap protection layered on an older appraised value. Your bill reflects the price you just agreed to. The pop-up is a feature of the statute, not a signal about the deal.

Can I appeal the assessor's value after I buy? You can. Assessment notices in Pulaski County go out around mid-May, and there is an informal review window before the formal Board of Equalization process. An appeal makes sense when the assessor's appraised value materially exceeds what you paid in an arm's-length transaction, because your purchase price is strong market evidence.

If I'm 65 or older, does the previous owner's freeze carry over? No. The freeze is personal to the owner who qualified for it. As a new owner who is 65 or older or disabled, you file your own freeze application after you close, and it locks your taxable value at the next assessment date following your qualification, not the seller's.

Does the credit apply to a second home or a rental? No. The Homestead Property Tax Credit is limited to a single primary residence per household. If you keep your prior Central Arkansas home as a rental after buying in Sherwood, the credit follows the address you actually live in.

Buying in Sherwood does not require you to memorize Amendment 79. It does require you to write your offer against the tax bill you will actually pay, not the one the seller has been paying. If you want a second pair of eyes on the numbers before you sign, Caleigh Dumas is happy to work through the pop-up math on a specific address with you. Let's Connect.