Golf courses are one of a handful of Indiana property types with their own valuation statute. Farmland gets a state-certified base rate; Section 42 housing gets mandated income capitalization; and golf courses get IC 6-1.1-4-42 — a regime where the DLGF itself sets a single statewide capitalization rate every year and assessors are required to use it.
If you own or operate a course, the entire assessment reduces to two numbers you can check: your net operating income and the state's published rate.
Why Golf Gets Special Treatment
Think about what a cost-approach assessment does to a golf course: 150 acres of land priced off a neighborhood land schedule, plus depreciated replacement cost on a clubhouse and maintenance buildings. None of that tracks what a course is worth, because a course's value is its operation — and courses sell rarely enough that comps are unreliable. The General Assembly answered in 2009 (P.L.182-2009(ss)) by mandating the income approach for "real property regularly used as a golf course," applicable to assessment dates after January 15, 2010, and requiring the method to produce "uniform and equal assessment of golf courses" statewide.
The definitions were tightened by P.L.159-2020 (HEA 1113-2020): a golf course is land predominantly used to play golf plus its associated yard improvements — a term that expressly includes the clubhouse, irrigation systems, pro shop, maintenance building, driving range, and food-and-beverage structures, so long as they're part of the course's net operating income. The whole operating plant is valued as one income stream, not as separate cost-approach line items.
The Mechanics: NOI ÷ OAR
Under subsection (e), for assessment dates after February 28, 2012, the DLGF must establish uniform income capitalization rates annually, along with the assessment procedures — formally promulgated at 50 IAC 29. The current numbers come from the DLGF's Golf Course Guidance memo of November 17, 2025:
- The statewide overall capitalization rate (OAR) for the January 1, 2026 assessment date is 11.96%.
- Value is determined — in the memo's words, "simplistically" — by dividing NOI by the OAR.
The NOI side is a defined process, not a guess:
- By December 31 each year, assessing officials must solicit gross income and allowable operating expense data from course owners and operators — and under subsection (g), owners must provide it. Federal tax returns can be used to verify.
- The assessor examines three consecutive years of financials and returns, using the most current completed records as of the assessment date, to compute a three-year average NOI.
- That average NOI, capitalized at the published rate, is the true tax value.
Subsection (c)(3) excludes the value of personal property, intangible property, and income derived from either — course naming rights are the memo's example, and the DLGF reads the exclusion to also cover pro-shop income and golf cart rental income. Your financial submission should break those streams out so they don't inflate the capitalized NOI.
Note
An 11.96% cap rate is high relative to most commercial real estate — which is favorable to owners. A high divisor reflects the risk and illiquidity of golf operations and produces a lower value per dollar of NOI. The rate resets annually, so the memo to watch each year is the DLGF's golf course guidance in the memo library — part of the free official tool stack worth bookmarking.
Warning
The data obligation cuts both ways. Skip the assessor's December income solicitation and you lose the ability to complain that the NOI is wrong — the assessor will estimate, and you'll be arguing from behind at the PTABOA. Subsection (i) makes the submissions confidential under IC 6-1.1-35-9, so competitive-sensitivity is not a reason to withhold.
What Owners Should Check
When the Form 11 arrives, audit the assessment against the statute:
- Was the income method actually used? Courses still occasionally get cost-approach values — land off the neighborhood land schedule plus building costs. That's contrary to the statute for property regularly used as a golf course.
- Does the implied NOI match your three-year average? Multiply the assessed value by 11.96% and compare to your books.
- Were excluded income streams stripped out? Pro shop, cart rentals, naming rights, and other personal or intangible income don't belong in the capitalized figure.
- Is non-course land separated correctly? Excess acreage genuinely not used for golf is ordinary land assessment territory — sometimes that helps you, sometimes it doesn't.
If the numbers don't reconcile, the appeal path is the standard one — Form 130 to the county, escalation to IBTR if needed — but the argument is unusually clean because the methodology is prescribed. It's the same statutory-framework posture that makes income-approach commercial appeals effective, with even less room for the assessor to argue method. The general appeal guide covers deadlines and forms; tracking multi-parcel course properties year over year is what our property lookup and data API are for.