The county mailed assessment notices to the owners of 98,745 parcels of residential property on Aug. 6. All of those landowners wishing to appeal their assessments must do so by Monday if they feel the values are inaccurate.

Thousands of other property owners received their assessment notices much later. Those landowners may file an appeal 90 days after the date of the notice, which means some appeals can be filed into January.

Some property appraisals have hit landowners with increases of up to 800 percent this year, the first time Beaufort County conducted a countywide reassessment since 1998. Officials have strongly encouraged anyone who feels their appraisal is incorrect to file an appeal.

So far, 6,600 appeals have been filed, said the county's deputy assessor Robert Reames. Even though local officials have said property assessments are sparking a great deal of controversy, Reames said the total number of appeals filed this year is far less than in previous years.

Typically, appeals are filed on about 10 percent of parcels, he said. Because the total number of parcels in the county is more than 107,000, that would equate to more than 10,000 appeals if history were holding true this year.

However, there is still time for many landowners to appeal.

Tax bills, which were mailed out just last week, must be paid by Jan. 15. Landowners who have filed appeals don't have to pay the full amount. Instead, they may pay a reduced amount of tax based on 80 percent of the appraised value.

If the landowner later loses the appeal, he or she will have to pay the balance later. If the landowner wins the appeal or is found to have paid too much in taxes, the county will issue a refund, Reames said.

He stressed that just because residents have been issued tax bills, it does not mean their appeal was rejected.

"Just because they got a tax bill does not mean their appeal's over," Reames said.

Residents also may receive revised assessment notices from the county even if they did not personally file an appeal, typically when assessors discover an error in a property's surrounding neighborhood and adjust the area accordingly.

Landowners who receive a revised assessment notice still will have 90 days from the date it was printed to file an appeal.

Property owners who already have filed appeals won't begin to have hearings on their assessments until next week, Reames said. Some of the investigations will continue past Jan. 1, he said.

Two of the county's appraisers will be stationed in Bluffton and two will be on Hilton Head Island starting next week so they can better handle the appeals process, Reames said. The process has been delayed because assessments of commercial property took much longer than expected, and appraisers already have been re-examining some neighborhoods even before they talk to the landowners.