Here in Texas there are only two certainties in life: death and property taxes (and probably mosquitos). Property taxes out here are ridiculous (for my home, I pay a rate of about 2.5% of the taxable value of the property every year), so there is a lot of incentive to protest your assessment. I did this for the first time two years ago using a third party consultant with limited success and had to pay the consultant half of the computed tax savings. Then last year I did the protest myself, and got my assessment dropped $28,000 on a home previously valued around $160,000, which is described in more detail here. I protested based on both unequal assessment and misclassification of the condition of the property, which meant I had to go down to their offices and provide pictures to argue my case.
As can be expected after last year’s big decrease, the appraisal district tried to recoup some of the lost valuation by unreasonably upping the assessment. My assessment went up over 8%, while my immediate neighbors each went down 4.4%. Harris County allows you to file online and request a settlement offer, and I did so with the reasons that the “value of the property was over market value” and “value is unequal compared with other properties” and with the following pithy argument:
The properties adjacent to mine had assessment reduced by 4.4% each, however mine was increased 8.2%, which proves unequal assessment. Subject property is not a magical place shielded from the economic realities of the world around it as the Appraisal District appears to believe. Considering the falling properties values in this neighborhood and across the county, the assessment of this property should be no more than prior year level, if not reduced a similar percentage to adjacent properties.
I submitted my protest with my opinion of property value at around $129,000 (versus their $146,000), and earlier this week got my settlement offer back at around $130,000. The reduction of $16,000 in market value represents a tax savings of about $400, all for about 15 minutes of work in looking up my neighbors’ properties and filling out the form. Plus since I did this myself, I get to keep all the savings!
I’d advise everyone to protest their assessments and do it yourself. You can find some good information in my post on last year’s protest here.
