Commercial Property Services Firm
A commercial property management and consulting firm helped clients appeal their property tax assessments. The process involved:
Each appeal took 15–20 hours of manual work spread over weeks. The firm was managing 30+ appeals annually. Most of the work was document-gathering and tracking — not analysis.
Property tax appeals are jurisdiction-specific. There's no standard form, no single deadline, and no one right way to do it. The firm had learned through experience which steps mattered in Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan. But that knowledge was scattered across documents, emails, and people's heads.
And every appeal had edge cases. One property had been recently renovated; another was part of a complex. These affected valuation and filing strategy.
We built an end-to-end automation system that:
The architecture: Instead of trying to build one-size-fits-all workflow, we built it in layers. Core logic (intake, research, analysis) is shared. Jurisdiction-specific layers (filing requirements, deadlines, forms) branch out. Staff can override or add edge-case logic when needed, but 85% of appeals flow through automatically.
We could have spent 6 weeks perfecting the system. Instead, we focused on the 80/20: what are the most common steps? Which 20% of edge cases account for 80% of complexity?
We scoped the initial build to handle straightforward residential and commercial properties in three jurisdictions. Special cases (environmental remediation, recent major construction) could be handled manually with a streamlined review process rather than full automation.
Days 1–2: Diagnosed the workflow. Mapped intake → research → filing → tracking. Identified three key decision points where staff needed to make judgment calls.
Days 3–6: Built core intake and research modules. Integrated with county property records APIs and comparable sales databases.
Days 7–9: Built filing document generation and deadline tracking.
Day 10: Tested against 10 prior appeals. Refined. Deployed.
Week 2–4: Staff used the system on real appeals. We monitored for edge cases and patterns. We found 3 scenarios we hadn't anticipated. We added handling for those. Now the system handles 85% without human intervention.
Capacity: The firm went from processing 30 appeals/year (at 15–20 hours each) to being able to handle 80+ appeals/year with the same staff. They're now expanding to new jurisdictions without adding headcount.
Quality: No more missed deadlines. No more incomplete filings. The system enforces process consistency.
Client experience: Clients get automated status updates. They know when their appeal was filed, when the hearing is scheduled, and what to expect.
Institutional knowledge: The system now contains 3+ years of appeal history, outcomes by jurisdiction, and what works. New staff don't have to learn from scratch.
Scope: End-to-end workflow system with multiple integrations (property records, comparable sales databases, filing systems, deadline tracking).
Timeline: Diagnosis (2 days) → Build (7 days) → Testing & Refinement (1 day) → Launch.
Tools: Custom Python system. Integrations with county property records APIs, real estate data providers, and Google Workspace for document generation and client communication.
Ongoing: We monitor the system weekly. When the firm encounters a new jurisdiction or situation, we add it to the system. They never go back to manual process.
Cost basis: Workflow automation of this scope (multiple decision points, multiple integrations) typically runs $25–40K depending on jurisdictional complexity.
If you have a multi-step process that's jurisdiction- or client-specific, but follows consistent logic underneath — case management, application processing, compliance workflows — custom automation can transform your capacity.
Adapted Machine specializes in cases where the workflow has variation but the core logic is sound. We build systems that let humans focus on judgment, not data entry.
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