Arkansas Reappraisal 2026: 10% Cap for You, Full Value for Buyers

Arkansas reappraisal 2026 notices in 21 counties, Garland and Saline included, raise your assessed value at most 10 percent this year, while a buyer is assessed at full value. Amendment 79 limits the first-year increase on vacant land to 10 percent of last year’s assessed value, and that limit belongs to you as the current owner. Under A.C.A. § 26-26-1123 a buyer takes full value the January after closing.

Perspective Properties buys vacant and rural land across nine states, Arkansas included, and September is when the reappraisal questions arrive from Hot Springs and Benton. Most owners ask whether the new value changes what their land is worth to a buyer. It changes the buyer’s tax bill, and by less than the notice suggests. Here is the arithmetic, county by county, with the statutes that control it.

Which Arkansas counties were reappraised in 2026?

Arkansas reappraised 21 counties in 2026 under the Assessment Coordination Division’s four-year schedule: Baxter, Boone, Conway, Craighead, Drew, Franklin, Garland, Hempstead, Hot Spring, Izard, Lonoke, Marion, Mississippi, Pope, Pulaski, Randolph, Saline, Scott, Stone, White and Yell. Garland and Saline each carry about 78,000 parcels, and Pulaski carries 177,000.

The schedule comes from the division’s own Four-Year Reappraisal Update, which lists every county, its parcel count, its appraisal contractor and its next cycle year. Garland’s 2026 work was done by ACT, Saline’s by Trimark, and Pulaski’s by the county’s in-house staff. All 21 return for their next reappraisal in 2030, because A.C.A. § 26-26-1902 now puts every county on a four-year cycle. Pope County’s assessor states the same rule in plain words: each parcel is reviewed every four years, and the assessor’s office does not set market value. Sales between buyers and sellers do.

Notices went out in July because the Assessment Coordination Division’s FAQ requires a value-change letter within 10 business days after July 1 of the assessment year. Garland County mailed its first round early in the month and a second round with estimated tax changes on July 15, according to Assessor Shannon Sharp in the Sentinel-Record. Saline County sent letters only to owners whose value went up, and its communications director told KATV that the increase will not appear on this October’s payment. Both counties set their equalization board deadline at August 17, the third Monday in August required by A.C.A. § 26-27-317. That window has closed, and the board only adjusts the assessment made in the year it meets.

How does the 10 percent cap work on vacant land?

Under Amendment 79, section 1(b), the first assessment after a reappraisal is capped at 10 percent above the prior year’s assessed value for any parcel that is not the owner’s homestead. Each following year adds another 10 percent of that pre-reappraisal base, never compounding, until the assessed value reaches the reappraised figure or a sale ends the limitation.

Assessed value in Arkansas is 20 percent of appraised market value, so the numbers on your notice are one fifth of what the appraiser thinks the land would sell for. Take a 20-acre tract that tracked the statewide market. The USDA Land Values 2026 Summary puts Arkansas farm real estate at $3,800 an acre in 2022 and $4,350 in 2026, a 14.5 percent move across exactly the Garland and Saline cycle. The tract’s appraised value rises from $76,000 to $87,000 and its full assessed value from $15,200 to $17,400.

The wording in Amendment 79 matters here, and most summaries get it slightly wrong. The second-year step is “an additional ten percent of the assessed value of the parcel for the year prior to the first assessment,” which means the phase-in climbs in flat steps of the old base rather than 10 percent on 10 percent. A parcel whose value jumped 40 percent would take four assessment years to arrive at full value: 110, 120, 130, then 140 percent of the old number. A 14.5 percent jump is fully absorbed in two.

Arkansas gives three kinds of change no cap at all. Newly discovered property, new construction and substantial improvements are assessed at full value in the first year, so a barn, a well house or a driveway cut since 2022 lands on the roll without the phase-in. The cap also describes the taxable base, never the market. An assessor who raised your value read local sales to do it, and a buyer will read the same sales.

What happens to the cap when you sell the land?

A.C.A. § 26-26-1123 ends the limitation at a sale. The county assessor values sold real property at 20 percent of its appraised value at the next assessment date after title transfers, and the new owner cannot claim any Amendment 79 limitation until the second assessment date after the transfer. The capped number on your notice is personal to you.

The assessment date in Arkansas is January 1, and the statute’s own text is short enough to quote: when a person sells his or her real property, the county assessor shall assess it at 20 percent of the appraised value at the next assessment date after the transfer of title. Sell the 20-acre tract in November 2026 and the buyer’s first assessment, on January 1, 2027, is the full $17,400. The buyer’s first shot at any limitation comes on January 1, 2028, and only if a later reappraisal raises the value again.

Perspective Properties underwrites the full reappraised assessment on every Arkansas parcel we look at, never the seller’s capped bill, because the capped bill is not something we can buy. Our first step on any tract in Garland or Saline is to pull the assessor record and read both numbers. The year-of-sale taxes stay in the seller’s name, since the division’s FAQ fixes ownership and value as of January 1 even when the land changes hands, and closing prorates that bill between the two parties by agreement. For scale, the state transfer tax on an $87,000 sale runs $287 at $3.30 per $1,000, and that single line item is several times what the cap is worth.

Which parcels feel a reappraisal and which mostly do not?

Market-valued land feels the 2026 reappraisal: vacant residential lots, lake lots on Hamilton and Ouachita, recreational tracts near Hot Springs Village, and acreage on the Benton and Bryant edge of Saline County. Agricultural, pasture and timber land valued under A.C.A. § 26-26-407 use-value guidelines moves on a different track, and the equalization board cannot hear an appeal of it.

Garland County is the clearest case of the first row. Census QuickFacts describes a county built around Hot Springs National Park and two reservoir lakes, and the parcels that draw a reappraisal jump there are weekend-cabin lots and view tracts whose comparables are other recreational sales, not farm ground. Saline County sits on the fast-growing southwest edge of Little Rock, where a five-acre rural-residential parcel outside Benton is priced by subdivision demand. Both counties carry roughly 78,000 parcels, which is why their contractors mail tens of thousands of letters in a cycle year.

Working farmland runs on the second row. A.C.A. § 26-27-317 says the board “shall not accept or consider” a petition over agricultural, pasture or timberland valued by the division’s guidelines and methods, and sends those disputes to the county court instead. The practical effect for a seller is that a rice field in Craighead County or a hay meadow in Yell County rarely shows the double-digit jump a lake lot does, because its value is keyed to productivity rather than to what a neighbor’s cabin site sold for. Our Arkansas land prices by region piece covers why Delta and Ozark acres price on different scales; this post is about what the assessor does with those prices in a cycle year.

What does the 2026 value cost on a 20-acre tract?

On a 20-acre tract that tracked the USDA statewide move from $3,800 to $4,350 an acre, the 2026 reappraisal lifts the full assessed value from $15,200 to $17,400. At Garland County’s average 43.84 mills the capped 2026 bill is $733, the full bill is $763, and the cap is worth $30 for one year.

The millage comes from the Department of Finance and Administration’s 2025 Millage Report for 2026 collections, published in March 2026. Garland’s county average of 43.84 combines 39.89 school mills, 0.93 city and 3.60 county; the Hot Springs School District alone is 41.6 and Lake Hamilton is 40.2, so the average is representative of most tracts there. Saline’s 51.98 reflects a heavier city and county load on top of 39.98 school mills. Your own bill will use the district your parcel sits in, and the report lists every one.

Set the $30 against the rest of the transaction and the cap shrinks to a rounding error. Thirty dollars is about one tenth of the transfer tax on the same sale. One year of price movement at the 2.35 percent Arkansas posted from 2025 to 2026 is worth about $2,045 on an $87,000 tract, sixty-eight times the cap. When we hear an owner say they are holding a lake lot to keep the capped assessment, this is the table we walk through, because the number being protected is smaller than one month of a lot’s upkeep in a gated community.

Should you sell before or after the reappraisal reaches the tax bill?

The 2026 reappraisal reaches a tax bill in March 2027 and comes due October 15, 2027, under A.C.A. § 26-35-501. Selling before then changes who pays that bill, not its size, so the timing decision turns on four questions about the parcel rather than on the reappraisal itself.

1. Is the land market-valued or use-valued? A lake lot took the full jump; a hay meadow under § 26-26-407 mostly did not.
2. Did anything new reach the roll since 2022? A structure or improvement is assessed at full value with no phase-in.
3. What does a year of holding cost in total? Add the tax bill to upkeep, association dues and the return the cash would earn elsewhere, then set the $30 cap beside it.
4. Is the 2025 bill paid? It is due by October 15, 2026, and A.C.A. § 26-35-501 adds a 10 percent penalty after that date, with the delinquency attaching to the land itself.

In Garland and Saline the four questions usually settle the decision faster than the notice did. Owners who bought cabin lots in 2020 or 2021 and stopped using them tend to land on the sell side once the holding math is written down, because the reappraisal simply confirmed that the market moved while the lot sat idle. Owners with productive farmland in Craighead or Yell tend to find the reappraisal barely touched them, and the decision goes back to whatever drove the question in the first place.

Christian Smith reviews every Arkansas offer we make, and the process is the same in a reappraisal county as anywhere else in the nine states where Perspective Properties buys land. We pull the assessor record, read the full and capped values side by side, and put a written cash offer in your hands within 24 hours. We pay the closing costs and charge no commission, and a clear-title parcel can close in as little as 14 days through remote e-notary signing. The income tax side of a sale is separate from all of this: IRS Topic 409 treats land as a capital asset, and land you inherited carries a basis stepped up to date-of-death value under 26 U.S.C. § 1014, which our state-by-state capital gains post walks through. When you are ready to see a number for a reappraised parcel, request an offer or start on the Arkansas land page, where Garland and Saline are covered county by county.