Terms of Service

1. These terms, and who they apply to

These terms cover your use of Bearing Tree, a per-address property-tax lookup platform, on the web and by API, that states the property tax a single-family house is expected to owe after a sale. They are a contract between Bearing Tree Data, Inc., of 1311 Vine Street, Suite 300, Cincinnati, OH 45202, United States (“Bearing Tree”, “we”) and the company that signs up (“Customer”, “you”).

The service is for businesses only, not consumers. By signing up you confirm that you are acting for your business and that you have the authority to commit your company.

The person who accepts these terms accepts them for the company, not for themselves. If you don’t have that authority, please don’t go ahead.

If documents disagree. This order applies: (1) a signed order form or agreement between us, (2) the data processing agreement, (3) these terms, (4) our Privacy Policy, (5) anything else on our website.

2. What the service is

You submit a property address, a purchase price and an expected closing date in the web app, one at a time or as a list, or through the API with a key. For an address in a county on our published coverage list, the platform matches it to its parcel, reads the county's current roll record and tax bill, applies that county's signed rule row and returns a dated tax line file: the seller's current bill, the expected bill for the first reassessed year and the year after, a low and a high figure, the arithmetic, and the county documents behind each number. The file is shown in the web app and delivered as a spreadsheet row, as a PDF sheet and, through the API, as JSON.

3. What the service is not

These limits are deliberate, and they are part of what you are buying. They are not defects.

Not a valuation, a rent estimate or an underwriting model. The file carries one line of your model. It does not value the house, estimate rent, pull comparable sales or compute a yield, and it does not tell you whether to buy.

Not the assessor's decision and not tax advice. The file applies a county's published rules and certified rates to the price you entered. It is a projection with its working shown. The assessor may set a different value, the taxing bodies may set different rates, and nothing in the file is legal or tax advice.

Not an appeal or protest service. We do not file, prepare or track valuation appeals, protests or exemption applications, and we do not represent you before any county board.

Not national coverage. The service covers the counties on the published list and no others. An address outside the list returns County not covered and is not charged.

4. What you need to do, and why it matters

What you get from the service depends a lot on things only you control. Please read this section carefully, because sections 9 and 10 build on it.

Type in the price and date you actually expect. The tax line is computed from the purchase price and closing date you give us. A file built on an asking price or a guessed date describes a different purchase from the one you make.

Check the parcel on the file. Every file names the county parcel it was built on and shows the county's own situs address for it. Confirm it is the house you are buying, above all for new construction, split lots and condominium units.

Read the as-of dates. Each file states the rule version and the date the county's rates were certified. A file run before the county certifies the year's rates uses the prior year's and says so. Re-run it, at no charge while the house is under contract, before you rely on it at closing.

Tell us what kind of buyer you are. The service assumes the buyer is a company or an individual who will not live in the house. If that is not true, the exemptions and caps we treat as ending may continue, and the file will overstate the bill.

Send us the bill when it disagrees. If a county notice or bill contradicts a file, send it. That is how a rule row gets corrected for you and for the next address in that county.

5. Getting started, and what is free

The first three addresses on a new account are free and need no payment card. They are full files, identical to paid ones.

An address in a county we do not cover, an address we cannot match to a parcel, and a re-run of an address you marked as under contract are never charged.

6. Fees

Price per address. You pay per address for which a tax line file is delivered. On Spot the price is $9 per address, billed monthly in arrears with no minimum. A prepaid block of 250 addresses costs $1,500, which is $6 per address. A prepaid block of 1,000 addresses costs $4,000, which is $4 per address. Prices are in US dollars and exclude any sales tax that applies.

Prepaid blocks. A block is valid for 12 months from purchase. Unused addresses in a block are refunded pro rata if you ask within 30 days of buying it. After that they stay available until the block expires and are not refunded.

What is not billed. There is no charge for accounts or users, for the PDF sheet, for a key, for list uploads, for requesting a county, or for re-running an address under contract until the closing date you entered, up to 120 days.

Credits for our errors. If a file was built on the wrong parcel, or a rule row is corrected because it was wrong when your file was issued, the address is credited back and the corrected file is issued free.

7. Delivery, availability and support

Turnaround. An address that matches cleanly is answered on screen while you wait. An address held for review is answered within one business day, and its status reads In review until then. A list is returned as each row completes.

Coverage list. The list of covered counties is published and dated. When a county changes its website and our reader for it fails its checks, the county is marked Paused, addresses in it are not charged, and it returns to the list when the reader passes again.

Availability. We run the service with reasonable care and announce planned maintenance by email. We do not promise an availability percentage.

Support. Support is by email at [email protected]. We aim to reply within one business day. That is a target, not a guarantee.

8. Tax line files, versions and correction

Versions. Every file carries the date it was run, the rule version for its county and the date the rates it used were certified. A re-run produces a new file and never overwrites the old one. Earlier versions stay downloadable for the life of the account.

Correction. If you hold a county notice or bill that contradicts a file, send it to us. A reviewer checks it against the rule row within two business days. If the row or the match was wrong, we correct it, issue a new file and credit the address.

Export. All files on an account can be exported at any time as CSV, one row per address and version, with the same columns the spreadsheet row carries.

9. What we promise, and what we don’t

We promise to provide the service with reasonable skill and care, and that we have the right to provide it.

We do not promise that a county will assess a house at the value, or bill it at the amount, that a file projects. Assessors exercise judgment, boards hear appeals, voters pass levies and legislatures change the rules, and a file reflects only what was published on its as-of dates.

Beyond that we give no other warranty. As far as the law allows, we exclude all implied warranties, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement.

10. Liability

10.1 Neither of us limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else the law says can’t be limited.

10.2 Losses neither of us covers. Neither of us is liable for lost profit, revenue, expected savings, business, goodwill or reputation, or for any indirect or consequential loss, however it arises.

10.3 Specific exclusions. We are not liable for a purchase decision, a bid, a price, a yield or a loan made in reliance on a file; for the difference between a projected tax line and the bill a county later issues; for an assessment, appeal, protest or exemption outcome; or for a file built on a purchase price, closing date or buyer type that was not the one that applied.

10.4 Cap. Our total liability to you in any 12-month period is limited to the fees you paid us in that period.

10.5 You accept that the limits in sections 9 and 10 are a fair way to share risk, given the price and your part under section 4, and that we could not offer the service at this price without them.

11. Confidentiality and data

The addresses, purchase prices and closing dates you submit are your confidential information. We use them only to deliver the service to you, we do not disclose which addresses you have run, and we do not use them to buy, bid on or broker property. We hold no real estate license and take no part in any transaction.

How we handle personal data is set out in our Privacy Policy and in the data processing agreement between us, which forms part of these terms. If the DPA and these terms disagree about personal data, the DPA wins.

12. Who owns what

The county rule table, the readers and the models are ours. The files we deliver to you are licensed to you for commercial use inside your business, without time limit: you may keep them, put them in your models, and share a file with your lender, partners, counsel and advisers on the deal it concerns.

You may call the service by automated means with your key, within the rate limits we publish. You may not resell files, or assemble them into a dataset that you offer to others.

You may not use our name or logo in public, and we may not use yours, without written permission first.

13. How long this lasts, and how it ends

13.1 The contract starts when you sign up and runs until one of us ends it.

13.2 You can end it. Cancel at any time. It takes effect at the end of the current billing month, unless section 6 sets a minimum term.

13.3 We can end it. We can end it with 30 days’ notice. We can end it immediately if you seriously break these terms and don’t fix it within 14 days of being told, if you become insolvent, or if your use exposes us to legal risk.

13.4 What happens then. We stop delivering and stop billing. You keep everything already delivered to you, and your right to use it continues. We delete or return our working copies as the DPA says. Sections 9, 10, 11 and 12 continue to apply.

14. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. A change that matters takes effect 30 days after we email you about it. If you don’t accept it, you can end the contract before then. Using the service after that date means you accept the change.

15. Contact

Bearing Tree Data, Inc., 1311 Vine Street, Suite 300, Cincinnati, OH 45202, United States
[email protected]

← Back