I did a full interior remodel and they absolutely took me up by more than 10%...

I think with all the permits/inspectors they had a pretty good idea of scope of work and just about nailed how much I spent on the whole thing. Now ultimately I fought it and was able to argue % of completion for one year which slowed the bump...

In this case the total increase is roughly equivalent to what they paid, but the renovation absolutely should have a significant portion that should be considered repair or maintenance. Imo their cap shouldnt go up for like replacing the roof, or replacing the A/C, water heater, nor does it seem to me that any portion of the cost that was demolition cost or replacement of the same thing. You cant tell me that removing a piece of drywall and putting up a new piece of drywall is a new improvement with any added value and yet the price of that is gonna be included in there.

Appraisal finally posted. Land valuation held and improvements down 5.5%! Probably 50-75k under what I can sell it for. Need to do some analysis and see if I can fight it at all.

Quick question: If I am bringing pictures of my home as evidence, do I just bring print outs or am I supposed to load them somewhere? I protested a couple of years ago (have remained flat since that protest) and I can't remember what I did with photo evidence.

MyMamaSaid said:

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14% increase in 77007

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Had formal yesterday, used jubally report. I got super lucky and not only reversed the 14% increase, but got my improvements down an additional $27k.

Can't imagine a better outcome and unlikely to ever reproduce that kind of result.

Yes, you need to bring them printed out.

Just got finished with my informal using my Jubally report. Got him to agree to an $80k reduction back down to the same value I had the last 2 years. The report claims I could possibly have gotten it a little lower if I had gone to formal, but being my first time to do this, I was a little nervous I might not get any more or actually do worse than what I got from the informal so I took it. Really can't complain about holding same value 3 years in a row in the Heights, especially since everyone on my street is $80k or more higher than me (which they tried to use against me, my damn neighbors need to get off their lazy asses and protest.)

Yea, I just don't understand people. Worst part is they even all complained about their values and went on and on at the last block party about how they were going to protest because we were getting screwed, yet none of them did. Literally took a couple hours of research/prep to get ready for it and a 45 minute sit down to save more than $1500 in property taxes. Kind of seems like a no brainer.

money can't buy smarts unfortunately

Went to our informal on Saturday.

Land value is the only thing that increased and got zero relief. Wouldn't budge because other lots had sold for more than what ours had been raised.

We were able to get them to come down on the house value by $16k, but overall still got the shaft for a $20k increase.

How do taxes work on a new build?

Mine is still pending. I close next month and trying to figure out my taxes for this year. My assumption it it should be based on how it was Jan 1 of 2019 which was just dirt. No improvement

Just annoyed it still say pending here in June.

Are you sure it was just dirt if you're already closing on it? If there was any structure at all on 1/1 then it'll be something more than land value, just not full value.

agdaddy04 said:

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Are you sure it was just dirt if you're already closing on it? If there was any structure at all on 1/1 then it'll be something more than land value, just not full value.

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It was dirt. They didn't start building anything until end of February.

Then it'll just be land value.

2 other questions regarding protest evidence if anyone has any knowledge on it:

1. My home was listed for sale ~6 months during 2018 (July - December) for $30k (starting price) - $55k (final listing price before property was taken off market) less than my 2019 market and appraised values. The home did not sale during that time period. Is this something I could use as evidence during my informal (and potentially formal) hearings or will they really not care?


2. Will HCAD entertain January 2019 sales transactions as part of my evidence or do the sales need to be from 2018?

not an expert, but by definition market value is what price the market dictates it could sell for.

Have real estate agent print the listing history and they should not be able to argue. But they will.

The Catfish said:

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2 other questions regarding protest evidence if anyone has any knowledge on it:

1. My home was listed for sale ~6 months during 2018 (July - December) for $30k (starting price) - $55k (final listing price before property was taken off market) less than my 2019 market and appraised values. The home did not sale during that time period. Is this something I could use as evidence during my informal (and potentially formal) hearings or will they really not care?


2. Will HCAD entertain January 2019 sales transactions as part of my evidence or do the sales need to be from 2018?

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1. That's good evidence.
2. Yes, the value is as of Jan. 1, 2019.

713_Ag said:

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Closed on a house in January and renovated prior to moving in. Received a letter in the mail not too long ago from HCAD asking for information regarding the newly purchased home (purchase price, etc.), so they could "provide a more accurate valuation". There is also a section asking if there have been any renovations made and the cost of those renovations. How would y'all go about this?

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Just got our valuation and it came in about 60K over purchase price in January. We have made quite a few improvements over the past few months, but shouldn't the 2019 tax basis be as of 1/1/19 and therefore be whatever purchase price is? If I protest will I only need to provide the closing docs showing the price?

713_Ag said:

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713_Ag said:

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Closed on a house in January and renovated prior to moving in. Received a letter in the mail not too long ago from HCAD asking for information regarding the newly purchased home (purchase price, etc.), so they could "provide a more accurate valuation". There is also a section asking if there have been any renovations made and the cost of those renovations. How would y'all go about this?

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Just got our valuation and it came in about 60K over purchase price in January. We have made quite a few improvements over the past few months, but shouldn't the 2019 tax basis be as of 1/1/19 and therefore be whatever purchase price is? If I protest will I only need to provide the closing docs showing the price?

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yes

Had my informal today and greed to a $35k decrease from their valuation, which is back to where I was last year. I feel like it is still a bit high from reality, but it was good enough to not have to deal with a formal. Couple of things:

77018 (Oak Forest) is the location of the home.


There are a lot of "new" appraisers it seems. A friend of mine who protests a ton of homes w/ HCAD and Fort Bend each year indicated they have heard around 30 new appraisers in HCAD. My appraiser definitely seemed new. She could not/would not negotiate outside of the very black and white lines she had been taught. It took her going to her manager to be able to make a real, fact based offer back to me.

From above, you can see I entered in the fact that my home was on the market for a significant amount of time and a much lower price than their market. HCAD could not care less about this fact, and rebutted with "the market is fickle".

Sales volume in our area almost sunk me - I had very good comps to use to my advantage, but the appraiser just cherry picked homes that were much nicer, newer updates, better features, etc. to use against me.

After much debating, I got them to lower my CDU which was the main reason I got them to come off their value. I brought in a lot of photos of the home along with comparable sales homes.

Good luck out there.

Informal today and compromised to get a little over half of my increase knocked off. My appraised value was still higher than my 10% increase cap so a win in my book.

I had 5 market comps but they argued that post sale remodels and foundation repairs disallowed them for comparison. We worked through a few other properties and met in the middle. Ended up only 6% increase and pretty happy with that to avoid the Formal clown show.

Any substance to the exclusion of post sale remodels as comps? Seems reasonable unfortunately.

Last year, I ended up having to go to the formal and was at least able to get my CDU knock down a level. Well, that paid off this year! This year, they were trying to shove a 9.5% increase down my throat and I walked away with a 3% decrease on Saturday...

Wow. I live in 77079 and I offered to iSettle with HCAD using a house listing on the street behind mine with comparison pictures and they offered to reduce my market value 12% from 504k to 445k, which is $10k less than it was last year. First time in 8 years my taxes won't be going up and they are actually going down relative to 2018. They've gone up 10% every year since I bought in 2011.

Well - I had an informal for 4 separate properties today.

First one is across the street from Lake Houston. House across street is within 1 year, 100sf, and same lot size. Valued at 20k less. She offered no decrease b/c "Land on the water is worth less than land not on the water." Neither lot is in any flood zone. So I said "That is great to now, I had no idea. Can you please put that on my file for the formal." She put it down and agreed on the precedent.

Second house ... it is my very own lakefront home! I said, "Okay, so we have set the precedent regarding value on lake value so i will skip the repair list and go straight to comparable non-lakefront home across the street. " She immediately walked away to speak with supervisor and said I need to go to formal hearing b/c she cant help.


What a clown show. Luckily for her I was able to waste 2.5 hours of her time to get 3 of 4 sent to formal...and only got yelled at once. Being patient with these clowns is key, but when they dont like you from the start...never let them off the hook. It is like teaching a child an important lesson where they get no closure from being right or wrong.


So here is to my formals coming up - none of them will go up as they pretty much jumped the shark on the values already.

I actually own more than four :P


Is there a way to file a formal complaint? Being serious. I've done this for years and never caught someone in a full on non-win situation before.

Bought last year in 77079 and was hit with a 7.7% increase. Today I got it knocked down to just a 1.49% increase. Feels like a win given I was initially assessed lower than my purchase price.

0.94% in 77077

I meant to put my story up. Happened in end of June.

Went in with Jubally arguing a decrease in the increase they thought. Going from 8% to only 2% increase.

I present my case on Saturday; guy listens and then says he doesn't agree because Jubally is using 'credits' to get the values down on homes and doesn't like the 10 I've picked vs. his 10 they picked.

Getting ready to fight and....

"...but if we use comparable sales value for your home, I see the HCAD value should be 1.6% less than what your currently valued at. So you can either take the lower value or go to formal".


So I won, but not really. The HCAD guy got the price down $5k from my current value so my taxes will actually go down for this year. First for me.

~egon

Anyone in heights area had luck arguing against comps HCAD uses based on location east vs. west of the Shepherd/Durham corridor? I'm west of this corridor which is less developed and zoned to Waltrip (vs. the East which is more developed and zoned to Heights HS) and I tried conveying the difference in home values to the appraiser at my informal yesterday, but she was having none of it.

Even using the comparable sales that HCAD had in THEIR OWN evidence, the "time adjusted sales price" for the comps they used were a solid 20-25% lower for the homes west of S/D vs the homes east of there. Of course when you average out all the comps it gives high valuation. Her only response was "HCAD classifies all of these homes as the same neighborhood so we aren't even going to discuss it". I told her to sign me up for my appointment ARB so I could hopefully talk with someone who can use logic but I'm wondering if anyone has faced this sort of issue?

Also, anyone had any luck getting HCAD to justify their "time adjusted sales" calculation? I tried showing some comps of current listings which show valuations aren't increasing at 1-2% per month like their calculations show, but similar to my first argument, I'm pretty sure she wasn't even listening.

I'm just East of Shepherd (Herkimer)

Ours went up 13-14%. We had a comp 2 houses down that is the EXACT same floor plan with numerous other comps at what our previous valuation was at.

He didn't laugh in my face, but it sure felt like that. We're stuck with the increase. If I could sell it for their valuation, I'd do it in a heartbeat.


Based on other replies here, it really sounds like it depends on who your person is. I got the ****ty end of the deal this year.

Have I missed the deadline to fight my tax increase? I haven't put in a dispute yet.

tmaggie50 said:

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Have I missed the deadline to fight my tax increase? I haven't put in a dispute yet.

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You have until May 15th OR 30 days from when you receive your property tax appraisal to protest.