My wife and I bought a piece of land 2 years ago that we are in the process of trying to build a house on it. The appraised value of the land went up almost 300% this year (to about what we paid for the land).

Although the appraisal is fair compared to market value, the fact that it went up so much in one year really pisses me off...

my immediate neighbors' land value also went up almost 300% just like ours did. The neighbor to the left has Homestead Exemption, so the overall increase of the property value was capped at 10%, but to do that, the house/improvement value went down significantly (33%), while the land value went up about 250%. The neighbor to the right has no HS excemption, so the overall increase of the property value went up 25%, with the land went up about 250%, while the home/improvement went down 25%...

Anybody has any idea of how I can fight the appraisal district about this?

Seriously, you should consider yourself lucky that your taxes for two years were a third of what they should have been.

The same thing happened to a townhome community where my cousin owns a home (although not 300%) and they protested together like 5-6 owners. They were able to get the total value of the property reduced but still higher than the previous year's appraisal.

Your case is a little unique because it is just the land and no home on it, see if you can find some evidence of sales in that area where those properties sold for less.

We bought our house just over a year ago, our appraisal came in roughly $4k lower than what it was last year; however, our house was exempt under the senior citizen thing for the first year we had it.

Doesn't quite make sense to me. There's not a house for sale in our zip code that is of comparable price to our's when we purchased. Everything is priced at least $30k more.

I mean, I'm fine with lower tax payments.

I would also post on the real estate forum, you'll get good response from people in the industry

For no apparent reason this year, my appraised value on my house dropped 30k. We bought the house for 180 and it had been sitting at 185 for tax appraisal, then this year it comes in at 151. No logic to it, but I will not complain.

N/M

[This message has been edited by tiger08 (edited 5/6/2013 12:28p).]