The Second Apartment Assessment Jump Is Already on Your Form 11 — and June 15 Is the Deadline

If you own an apartment complex in Marion County, you already lived through round one: the nearly $2 billion of assessed value the county added to roughly 1,000 complexes of 20 or more units for the January 1, 2025 assessment date — the increase that landed on the tax bills you're paying this year.

Here is what too many owners haven't internalized yet: round two is already in your hands. According to a February 2026 client alert from Faegre Drinker's state and local tax group, the Department of Local Government Finance increased apartment base rates again for the January 1, 2026 assessment date — the values that will drive your pay-2027 bills. In Faegre Drinker's words, the back-to-back increases create "enormous two-year jumps" for Indiana apartment owners.

And the timing is unforgiving. The Form 11 notices Marion County mailed on April 28, 2026 contain those January 1, 2026 values. The 45-day appeal clock they started runs out on June 15, 2026 — five days from today. The second jump is not a next-year problem. It is a this-week problem.

Why this happened twice

Indiana assesses improvements using DLGF cost schedules — standardized base rates per square foot by property type, grade, and construction class that county assessors apply more or less mechanically. Two successive changes hit apartments:

Round one (January 1, 2025 values, pay-2026): DLGF removed a sizeable adjustment in the cost schedules that had long moderated apartment values. With that adjustment gone, Marion County applied the higher resulting base rates to apartment complexes of 20+ units — about 1,000 properties — adding nearly $2 billion of AV in a single cycle, per the Faegre Drinker analysis. We covered that wave, and the appeal response to it, in our earlier report.

Round two (January 1, 2026 values, pay-2027): For the next assessment date, DLGF increased the apartment base rates themselves. This wasn't a Marion County choice — base rate tables apply statewide — but Marion County's concentration of large complexes means Indianapolis owners absorb the biggest dollar impact, stacked directly on top of round one.

The combined effect is multiplicative, not additive. The second increase applies to a valuation foundation the first increase already raised.

The compounding math (hypothetical)

To make the stacking concrete — these percentages are illustrative, not your numbers; pull your own Form 11s:

In this hypothetical, an owner who shrugged off the first increase is now staring at a two-year AV climb of about 44% — with the tax consequence magnified because apartments sit at the 2% circuit breaker cap, so cap credits absorb less of the increase than many owners assume, and any referendum rates apply outside the caps entirely. Whatever your actual percentages are, the structure is the same: jump two compounds on jump one.

Why cost-schedule values are appealable

A base-rate-driven increase is not a market judgment about your property — it's a table change applied across the board. That's exactly the kind of assessment Indiana law lets you challenge, because the legal standard is market value-in-use, not cost-schedule output. The cost approach is a starting presumption, and an owner who brings better evidence of value can overcome it.

For apartments, the better evidence is almost always the income approach:

• Actual rent roll — not the pro forma the cost tables implicitly assume. If your effective rents, concessions, and collections don't support the new AV, that gap is your case.
• Actual operating expenses — insurance is the headline item; multifamily insurance costs have risen sharply industry-wide, and every dollar of expense reduces NOI and value.
• Vacancy and collection loss — actuals, trailing twelve months.
• Capitalization rate evidence — multifamily cap rates moved up with interest rates from their 2021-2022 lows. A value built from 2026 NOI at a 2026 cap rate frequently lands below a value built from replacement-cost tables.

Sales evidence stacks on top: arm's-length sales of comparable Marion County complexes near the January 1, 2026 valuation date. Our guides to comparable sales evidence and what survives PTABOA scrutiny cover the standards; pull candidate comps through the property lookup.

There's also a uniformity angle particular to round two: assessors applying new base rates at scale make errors at scale. Grade, condition, effective age, unit mix, and quality classifications drive large dollar swings under the new tables. Verify every input on your property record card before assuming the math, even the cost-approach math, was done right.

What to do before June 15 — this week's checklist

1. Pull both Form 11s side by side. Your January 1, 2025 notice (last year) and the January 1, 2026 notice mailed April 28. Compute the two-year change for each parcel. That number — not this year's bill — is what you're deciding whether to fight.
2. Run the income approach overnight. Trailing-twelve NOI divided by a supportable cap rate. If that value is materially below the Form 11, you have a case worth filing.
3. File Form 130 by June 15 — by June 12 if you can. One per parcel, filed with the Marion County Assessor. The step-by-step checklist covers the fields that get appeals dismissed; with five days left, the online portal or certified mail are your only defensible filing routes. State a specific opinion of value backed by your income workup.
4. File even if your evidence binder isn't finished. The Form 130 preserves jurisdiction; the full evidence package develops at the informal conference and PTABOA stages over the following months. A timely filing with a defensible opinion of value beats a perfect package that arrives June 16.
5. Remember the payment shield. A pending appeal gives you payment protection on the disputed amount — while it's unresolved, you pay based on the prior assessment rather than fronting the full disputed increase. The payment protection guide explains the mechanics. With increases this size, the cash-flow protection alone can justify filing.
6. Calendar the pattern. Two consecutive years of apartment base-rate increases is a trend, not an accident. Whatever DLGF's tables do for January 1, 2027, assume the Form 11 that arrives next spring deserves the same scrutiny — and that appeal-readiness (clean rent rolls, expense documentation, cap-rate files) is now a permanent operating discipline for Indiana multifamily.

The bottom line

The first $2 billion wave taught Indianapolis apartment owners that cost-schedule changes can move values more in one cycle than the market moves in five. The second wave is already printed on the Form 11 in your files, and it compounds the first. Faegre Drinker's "enormous two-year jumps" framing is the right one — and the only cycle where you can still do something about it closes June 15.

Five days. File.

Related reading

• The first wave: Indianapolis's $2B apartment assessment increase
• Form 130 filing checklist for the June 15 deadline
• Marion County 2026 Form 11 notices
• PTABOA hearing evidence guide
• Payment protection while your appeal is pending
• Comparable sales evidence that holds up