Today we’d like to introduce you to Christine Lucian.
Hi Christine, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
My journey into property taxes really started more than 16 years ago, and like a lot of the best things in life, I don’t think I could have predicted where it would eventually take me.
I built my career working inside Michigan’s property tax system as an assessor. Over the years, I gained an incredible amount of experience not only in how properties are valued and assessed, but in seeing firsthand how confusing the entire system can be for the average property owner. Property taxes affect one of the largest investments most people will ever make, yet so many homeowners have no idea how their taxes are calculated, what their rights are, or what options they have when something doesn’t seem right.
That realization became a huge turning point for me.
The more experience I gained, the more passionate I became about bridging that knowledge gap. I didn’t want the information I had learned throughout my career to only exist behind the walls of assessing offices or within the real estate industry. I wanted everyday homeowners, families, investors and real estate professionals to have access to it too.
That eventually led me to build Michigan Property Tax Solutions and The Property Tax Academy around a very simple philosophy: people over profit.
What started as helping people better understand their assessments has grown into something much larger. Today, I work directly with property owners navigating assessments and property tax appeals, while also educating homeowners, investors and real estate professionals throughout Michigan. Through classes, workshops, online education and social media, I’ve made it a personal mission to take a subject that can feel intimidating and make it practical and understandable.
One of the things I’m most proud of is that I haven’t had to choose between being an assessor and being an advocate for education. My experience inside the system is exactly what allows me to explain it differently. I understand how assessing works from the municipal side, but I also understand how overwhelming it feels when you’re the homeowner opening a tax bill or assessment notice and wondering what any of it means.
Today, my goal is bigger than simply helping someone lower a property tax bill. I want people to walk away understanding their property better than they did before they met me. I want real estate professionals to be able to better educate their clients. And ultimately, I want to help create a more informed and empowered community of Michigan property owners.
Looking back, what began as a career became something I genuinely feel called to teach. And I think I’m still very much in the process of building what that can become.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It definitely has not been a smooth road, but I think some of the hardest parts have also shaped what I stand for today.
One of my biggest challenges was simply creating something that didn’t really exist before. When I began building this business and bringing property tax education directly to homeowners and real estate professionals, there wasn’t an obvious blueprint to follow. For more than 18 months, it felt like many high-level professionals didn’t quite know what to do with me. I wasn’t fitting neatly into an existing category, and when you’re doing something people haven’t seen before, sometimes the first reaction isn’t excitement, it’s skepticism.
It took time and consistency for people to understand that this wasn’t a gimmick or a temporary idea. I was trying to change the way people thought about property taxes and, more importantly, how early in a real estate transaction we should be talking about them.
That mission has occasionally put me at odds with people in my own industry. I’ve had professionals question why I spend so much time educating people or giving away so much knowledge. But the human connection is everything to me. Behind every assessment, tax bill or closing is a real person or family. When someone calls me scared because their tax bill changed dramatically after purchasing a home, I don’t see a number, I see someone who trusted the professionals around them to prepare them for one of the biggest financial decisions of their life.
That’s also why one of the hardest challenges has been getting some real estate and lending professionals to understand just how important this education is. There are incredible agents and lenders who genuinely care about what happens to their clients long after the closing table, and those are the people I love working with. But there are also people who are so focused on getting the deal closed that property taxes become an afterthought. Unfortunately, families can be the ones who pay the price later.
I’ve experienced that same frustration while teaching continuing education. I can stand in front of a room knowing that what I’m teaching could potentially save one of their future clients thousands of dollars or prevent a family from purchasing a home they ultimately can’t afford, while knowing that a few people in the room are simply waiting for their continuing education credit. That can be difficult. But I’ve learned not to teach for those few people. I teach for the person in the room who is listening, who asks questions, and who will use that knowledge to protect their next client.
Another lesson took me years to learn: valuing my own time and expertise. For a long time, I became the person people called for “one quick question.” I genuinely love helping people, so saying yes came naturally. Eventually I realized there is a difference between being generous with knowledge and allowing years of experience to be treated as something without value. Learning that distinction wasn’t about becoming more money-focused, it was actually about building something sustainable enough that I could continue helping people at the level I wanted to.
Some of the media attention and conversations that have surrounded my work have reinforced why I keep pushing. Property taxes aren’t just numbers on a spreadsheet. When people don’t understand how the system works, the consequences can affect household budgets, homeownership and families’ financial stability.
My philosophy has always been people over profit, and ironically, some of my biggest obstacles have strengthened that belief. I’ve learned that doing something differently can be lonely before it’s respected, education isn’t always valued until someone desperately needs it, and you can’t force everyone to care as deeply as you do.
But you can keep showing up for the people who do.
And that’s what I’ve chosen to do.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Michigan Property Tax Solutions powered by The Property Tax Academy?
Michigan Property Tax Solutions and The Property Tax Academy were built around one core belief: people deserve to understand one of the largest ongoing expenses connected to owning real estate.
At the heart of what I do is property tax education, consulting and advocacy. I help Michigan property owners understand their assessments, determine whether their property may be over-assessed, navigate the appeal process, and make informed decisions about their property taxes. When appropriate, I also work directly with clients through the appeal process, including Michigan Tax Tribunal cases.
But what I think I’ve become most known for is education.
Property taxes are incredibly complicated, and unfortunately, most people don’t learn how they work until something goes wrong. Over my 16 years in this industry, I have taken literally thousands of phone calls from homeowners who were confused, panicked and sometimes crying because their mortgage payment had suddenly increased due to a change in their property taxes.
Those conversations stay with you.
I’ve talked to families who purchased a home based on a monthly payment they believed they could comfortably afford, only to discover later that their taxes, and therefore their escrow payment, could change dramatically after the purchase. In some circumstances, I’ve seen property taxes more than triple following a sale.
And unlike so many other costs associated with buying a home, property tax is forever.
It isn’t simply a closing cost you pay once and move on from. It’s an ongoing expense of property ownership that can make or break a family’s monthly budget. For an investor, it can completely change the numbers behind a deal and make or break the expected return on investment.
That’s why I believe understanding the future tax picture should be part of the conversation before someone purchases the property, not after.
After 16 years of receiving those heartbreaking phone calls, I became convinced that our industry has to do a better job before people ever reach the closing table.
That’s a huge reason my business development role with NEO Home Loans is so important to me.
What attracted me to NEO was the concept of mortgage planning rather than simply mortgage lending. There is a very meaningful difference between helping someone obtain a mortgage and helping someone build a sustainable plan around homeownership.
A traditional mortgage conversation can easily become transactional. What can you qualify for? What’s the rate? What’s the payment? How quickly can we close?
Mortgage planning asks more.
What payment is actually comfortable for your family, not just what can you technically qualify for? What could that payment look like next year? What happens when the property’s taxable value uncaps? What should we reasonably anticipate for property taxes? How does the mortgage fit into your larger financial goals? What does owning this home look like financially five, ten or twenty years from now?
Because qualifying for the house today and comfortably affording the house tomorrow are not necessarily the same thing.
That philosophy aligns perfectly with everything I’ve spent my career advocating for. I don’t want to receive the phone call a year later from a homeowner in tears because their mortgage payment increased and nobody prepared them. I want to be part of the conversation before they ever buy the house.
The same philosophy drives The Property Tax Academy.
A large part of my work is educating real estate agents, mortgage professionals, title company representatives and investors about Michigan property taxes, taxable value uncapping, assessments, exemptions, appeals, and the conversations they should be having with the people they serve.
I intentionally teach across different sides of the real estate transaction because protecting consumers isn’t the responsibility of just one profession. Agents, lenders and title professionals each interact with a client at different points in the process, and each has an opportunity to help that person understand what they’re walking into.
The more educated the professionals surrounding a transaction are, the less likely it is that a family reaches the other side asking, “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
My videos and educational content are heavily focused on professionals and investors for the same reason. I’ve realized the incredible multiplier effect education can have.
If I educate one homeowner, I may change the outcome for one family. If I educate one great real estate, mortgage or title professional, that knowledge can protect hundreds of families throughout that person’s career.
What sets me apart is that I’m not teaching this from a textbook. I’ve spent 16 years working inside Michigan’s property tax system as an assessor. I understand how properties are valued from the municipal side, how assessors analyze data, how the appeal process works, and where misunderstandings commonly happen. My role is to take something highly technical and translate it into information people can actually understand and use.
I’m also incredibly intentional about maintaining the human side of everything I do. I never want someone to feel like a parcel number, loan number, assessment or case file. There is a person behind every transaction.
What looks like numbers on a spreadsheet to someone in our industry can represent a family’s grocery budget, childcare, retirement savings, or whether they can comfortably stay in their home. For an investor, those same numbers can determine whether an investment actually performs the way they planned.
What I’m most proud of when it comes to my brand is that “people over profit” isn’t simply something written on my website. It’s the standard I use to make decisions.
There have been opportunities to automate more, educate less or guard the knowledge I’ve accumulated over 16 years. I’ve intentionally chosen not to do that. I believe education creates better homeowners, better real estate professionals, better investors and ultimately stronger communities.
I’m also proud that I’ve created different ways for people to get help depending on what they actually need. Not everyone needs someone to take over an entire property tax appeal. Sometimes someone needs education, a second set of eyes or guidance so they can advocate for themselves. Other clients need hands-on representation. And sometimes a professional simply wants to become better educated so they never have to tell a client, “I didn’t know.”
Ultimately, I don’t want Michigan Property Tax Solutions or The Property Tax Academy to be known simply as the place you call when your taxes are too high.
I want to be the person people think of when they have a question about Michigan property taxes. I want to help change the conversation from reacting to financial problems after they happen to planning for them before they happen.
Whether you’re a property owner trying to understand an assessment, an investor calculating the true return on a potential acquisition, a real estate agent trying to protect your clients, a title professional helping people navigate the closing process, or a mortgage professional helping a family make one of the biggest financial decisions of their lives, I want people to know there is somewhere they can turn where they’ll get education first, an honest answer, and someone who genuinely cares about what happens after the transaction is over.
That’s the brand I’m most proud of building. One that doesn’t measure success by the transaction, but by what happens to the person after it.
Before we let you go, we’ve got to ask if you have any advice for those who are just starting out?
Perseverance. More than anything, perseverance.
If I could go back and tell myself one thing when I was starting out, it would be that not everyone is going to understand what you’re building, especially when you’re creating something they haven’t seen before. That doesn’t mean you’re on the wrong path.
You’re going to have doors slammed in your face. You’re going to hear no. You’re going to have people question whether your idea will work. You may even have moments when the people you expected to support you are the ones making you question yourself.
Keep going anyway.
I spent a long time waiting for other people to validate what I already knew I was capable of. Eventually, I realized I didn’t need permission to own my expertise, take up space or build something differently.
I would also tell anyone starting out, do not dim your light to make other people more comfortable. I think especially when you’re ambitious, knowledgeable and passionate about something, there can be pressure to make yourself smaller so you don’t intimidate people or disrupt the way things have always been done.
Don’t.
Own the room when you’ve earned the right to be in it. Speak confidently about what you know. And believe in yourself enough to keep showing up when other people are still skeptical.
I also wish I had understood earlier that not everyone who wants access to you is necessarily rooting for you. There will be people who recognize your knowledge and your value before they’re willing to publicly acknowledge it. Some will want your ideas, your expertise, your connections or your credibility because of what it can do for them, while being much slower to give you the credit, recognition or seat at the table you’ve earned.
That was a hard lesson for me.
You can still be generous. You can still help people. You can still lead with kindness. But you can also have boundaries.
It took me years to understand that protecting my time and valuing my expertise didn’t conflict with my belief in putting people over profit. In fact, learning those boundaries allowed me to give more of myself to the people who genuinely valued what I brought to the table.
And finally, don’t confuse a slow beginning with failure.
Sometimes you’re not being rejected because you’re wrong. Sometimes you’re simply early. Sometimes people need to see you do something consistently before they’re willing to believe in it.
Let them watch.
Keep learning. Keep showing up. Keep doing the work when nobody is applauding yet. Give people credit, even when others haven’t always done the same for you. Build your reputation in a way that allows you to be proud of how you got there, not just where you ended up.
Some of the doors I desperately wanted someone else to open for me years ago don’t matter to me anymore.
I eventually realized I could build my own door.
That’s probably what I wish I had known from the beginning.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.michiganpropertytaxsolutions.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themichiganassessor
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/themichiganassessor
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/themichiganassessor
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@themichiganassessor
- Other: https://calendly.com/propertytaxsolution
