See exactly how to find comparable sales in Gwinnett County: one Lawrenceville home taken through qPublic to a hearing-ready adjustment table.
# How to Find Comparable Sales in Gwinnett County (2026)
You find comparable sales for a Gwinnett County appeal in the county's own Property Information Search: open your home's page, check the "Recent Sales In Area" list or the "Comp Report Generator," and keep arm's-length sales of similar nearby homes that sold before the valuation date. Then you adjust each sale price for how that home differs from yours and compare the adjusted prices with the value on your notice.
Suppose your Gwinnett County assessment notice puts your home at $520,000, and the recent sales on your street say otherwise. That gap is your entire appeal, and comparable sales are how you prove it. The five steps below take one hypothetical Lawrenceville home the whole way through with the county's own free tools, and every dollar figure in the example is illustrative. (If you haven't filed yet, filing comes first, and Step 5 covers how Gwinnett takes appeals.)
You find them on qPublic, where Gwinnett's Property Information Search opens the county's records, and you narrow them in five steps:
The subject is an illustrative Lawrenceville single-family home: 4 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, 2,400 square feet, built in 1998, average condition. Its notice puts fair market value at $520,000 for 2026, which works out to roughly $217 per square foot. In the example, comparable Lawrenceville homes sold for less in 2025, and that spread is what the comps need to show.
Keep one number straight before you start. Georgia assesses property at 40% of fair market value (O.C.G.A. § 48-5-7), so this home's assessed value is $208,000, which is 40% of $520,000. Your comp analysis targets the full $520,000 market value on your notice, not the $208,000 assessed value (the 2026 notice no longer prints assessed values). Build your comps around the market value, not a 40% figure, or your math will be off from the first line. For more on the ratio, see what Georgia's 40% assessment ratio means for your appeal.
Everything starts with the county's Property Information Search, which the Gwinnett County Assessors' Office links from its Property Appeals page and which opens the county's records on the qPublic site. The county says "all neighborhood property information and sales are available online," and you can search by parcel number, owner name or address. Type in your address and open your property's page.
Your property's page is your baseline: note the living area (2,400 sq ft in the example), year built, beds and baths, the county's value, any sales history, and the neighborhood group (NBHD on county records).
If that sales history shows you bought the home recently, note the price: Gwinnett's Assessors' Office FAQ says the most recent sale "will be considered, but it does not set or establish the appraised value."
You can also ask for the comparables the county used. Under O.C.G.A. 48-5-306, you may request the assessors' method, the documents they reviewed, and the address and parcel number of every property they used as a qualified comparable, and Georgia law sets ten business days for them to provide copies. Their list shows which sales the county leans on; ask the Board of Assessors' office how it takes these requests.
Now pull the neighborhood sales. On your property's page, the county's Assessors' Office FAQ says to look for "Recent Sales In Area" or use the "Comp Report Generator." Then narrow the results with four checks:
The county's own analysis uses the same window. Its FAQ says "Sales that occurred in the prior year (January through December) help determine the likely selling price of similar properties as of the assessment date." Older sales are weaker because prices move: the state's method for checking county values adjusts sale prices, as needed, for market changes between the sale and the valuation date, so an older comp needs a time adjustment the assessors can dispute.
Screen the list for sales that weren't open-market deals. Georgia defines fair market value as the price a knowledgeable buyer would pay a willing seller in an arm's-length, bona-fide sale (O.C.G.A. § 48-5-2), and the statute says that means a sale made in good faith "by unrelated or unaffiliated parties," each acting in their own interest. A sale between relatives or other related parties fails that test, so cut family and related-party transfers.
Foreclosures, bank sales and short sales are less clear-cut, so don't cut them on sight. The same statute says an arm's-length sale includes "a distress sale, short sale, bank sale, or sale at public auction," and it lists bank and distressed sales of comparable property among the criteria assessors apply when they value real property. But a Department of Revenue appraisal rule written for personal property, not homes, says sales where "the lien holder receives or repossesses the property" and "deed under power of sale transactions" (the deed that transfers a home at a foreclosure sale) aren't arm's-length. Both texts appear in the department's Board of Equalization workshop manual, which it marks as educational.
So build your list on ordinary sales. If a bank, short or auction sale is one of your closest matches, you can include it, but label it and expect the assessors to question it.
Two homes are never identical, so you adjust each comp's sale price up or down for how it differs from yours, then compare the adjusted figures. Georgia's appraisal rule for the sales comparison approach works this way: it tells appraisers to "adjust such comparables for physical differences from the subject property," and its list of adjustments starts with "time of sale; location; physical characteristics." Neither the state rule nor Gwinnett's pages set dollar amounts, so every figure below is illustrative.
One way to size an adjustment is paired sales analysis, which the Department of Revenue's rules define as comparing "the sale prices of similar properties, some with and some without a particular characteristic." Suppose two otherwise alike local sales differ by 200 square feet and $10,000 in price: $10,000 divided by 200 is $50 a square foot for extra living area. That illustrative rate is the one the table uses, not a standard one. Any amount you use is your own estimate, so show how you got it.
Read one row to see the logic. Comp A sold for $435,000 at 2,300 sq ft. It's 100 sq ft smaller than your home, so you add $5,000 to bring it up to 2,400 sq ft, then subtract $8,000 because its renovated kitchen makes it superior to yours. Its adjusted value is $432,000.
The adjusted values run from $432,000 to $473,500, and all four sit below the county's $520,000; even the highest is $46,500 under it. Their average is $452,375. If the Board adopted that figure, the example home's fair market value would drop by $67,625, and its assessed value would fall from $208,000 to $180,950 (40% of $452,375). In your own appeal, ask for a value inside your adjusted range and say how you chose it.
Now look at the last column. Every comp's total adjustment is 3.2% of its sale price or less. No Georgia source sets a maximum, but a comp that needs large adjustments on several features is a weak match, and you're better off finding a closer one.
Pick your strongest 3 to 5 adjusted comps and put them on one page: a clean table like the one above plus a short price-per-square-foot summary that lines your indicated value up against the county's. No Georgia rule sets how many comps you need; three to five is a practical target, enough that one odd sale doesn't carry your case.
If you'd rather start from a finished set of comps, AppealAlly's DIY Appeal Kit includes comparable sales with a sales map and evidence grid, and you file the appeal yourself.
Keep two mechanics separate. The appeal itself goes to the Board of Assessors through the county's online portal, or on Form PT-311A by mail or in person, and the county "does not accept appeals submitted by email or fax." Georgia law sets the appeal window at 45 days, and Gwinnett counts it from the date in the upper right-hand corner of your assessment notice. For help with the form itself, see how to file the PT-311A correctly.
The evidence for the Board of Equalization travels a different channel. Gwinnett's Board of Equalization page asks you to email all evidence to BOEEvidence@gwinnettcounty.com no less than seven days before the hearing date. Georgia law sets a separate exchange between the two sides: either side can request the other's list of witnesses and documents at least ten days before the hearing, it must be provided at least seven days before, and a failure to comply is grounds for an automatic continuance or for excluding that evidence.
At the hearing, three appointed Gwinnett citizens sit as the Board of Equalization (O.C.G.A. § 48-5-311) and rule on your value. The assessors carry the burden of proving their value by a preponderance of the evidence. The Board announces its decision at the conclusion of the hearing, puts it in writing, signs it, and delivers or mails it to you. If the Board lowers your value, Georgia law says the assessors can't raise it for the next two years, subject to exceptions, such as when the owner neither attended the hearing nor sent written evidence. For the questions to expect, see what the Board of Equalization will ask.
Confirm with your county before you file.
The method works anywhere in Georgia, because every county values property as of January 1, assesses it at 40% of fair market value, and uses the same arm's-length definition; what changes is the search site and how each Board takes evidence. If you're still deciding whether your value is worth appealing, five signs a Georgia property is over-assessed is a quick check.
In Gwinnett County's 2025 tax year, 20,229 residential property tax appeals were filed, and 82.2% of closed appeals ended with a lower value. Among appeals that won a reduction, the median cut in fair market value was $15,600 (Gwinnett County public records request, 2025 tax year).
This article is general information drawn from public sources: the Gwinnett County Assessors' Office pages, the county's Board of Equalization page, the Georgia Department of Revenue, and the Georgia Code, as read on September 29, 2026. The worked example is illustrative, time windows are estimated, and county practice varies, so check the dates on your own assessment notice and with your county's board of assessors. It is not legal or tax advice.