Haha…right! I didn't say they were going to agree with me!

I would not be at all surprised if they blatantly ignore their own data.

They will tell you that you live in "River Oaks" if you live anywhere within 25 miles of it and your home is worth more than ~$200k.

This is exactly what I'm afraid of, but I'm willing to risk it because our market values are just so egregiously bad.

If I lose, It doesn't affect my taxable value this year, and I'll just protest again next year, after all my neighbors who sold get their HCAD values lowered to their actual purchase price.

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Same reason I don't want to be arrested and go to jury trial.

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Always a life goal to not be arrested.

Has anyone ever tried binding arbitration? That's the next step after the review board. It costs a few hundred, but the appraisal district pays if the arbitrator value is closer to your value. The arbitrators are realtors, and this was intended as a simple way to dispute the review board versus suing them in district court, but I've never heard of anyone actually trying it.

My guess that anyone that goes this route is likely for commercial property. Unless you're getting totally boned by HCAD, The risk of having to pay likely outweighs the savings if you "win". So if you win, great. HCAD gets another crack at you next year. If you lose, now you pay the fee (no idea how much it is...$500?) plus your higher taxes since you lost. It also wouldn't surprise me if you won that they flag your account and give you some "special" attention in future years to ensure they don't lose again.

YellAg2004 said:

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After going to the 3-member board 2x in previous years, I quickly learned to take the best offer you could get at the informal level. If you think the original valuation process is corrupt, wait until you see the "impartial" 3-member board that has been sitting in the same room with the same HCAD rep for the past several weeks, all getting to deal with the same people, undoubtedly including some real gems because, let's face it, 95% of the population is nuts.

If you think they'll even be able to understand reasonable evidence presented in a clear and logical format, including tables, charts, etc., well, you're giving them way too much credit. Maybe if you write it in crayon you might be able to keep their attention. That is, if you can keep one of the members from trying to eat the crayon. At the end of the day, one member is going to pull a number from somewhere in their nether regions and throw it out and the other two will immediately agree and that's that.

Good luck. I bet the online version of this kangaroo court will be even more enjoyable.

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I didn't do the 3 person board, but had an in person meeting with an HCAD rep last year one on one. I got my value lowered much below their online informal offering.

My experience a couple years before with the 3 person board was similar, but a much worse experience with an unethical HCAD rep as part of that 3 person board.

Sounds like I should have picked the one-person option when I filed my isettle protest.

BSME83 said:

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Has anyone ever tried binding arbitration? That's the next step after the review board. It costs a few hundred, but the appraisal district pays if the arbitrator value is closer to your value. The arbitrators are realtors, and this was intended as a simple way to dispute the review board versus suing them in district court, but I've never heard of anyone actually trying it.

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The company I use took mine to binding arbitration two years ago. It took a LONG time. I think they finally settled a week before the next valuation came out.

Right. It's like Groundhog Day every freaking year.

I did isettle last year and got it down from $525k to $425k using two comps. Both were identical to my house, but one had a pool and one didn't. Easy-peasy.

Now I'm back up to $525k again. The difference this year is everyone's market values are significantly higher than the sales comps (anywhere from 15-20% higher). Thankfully, a couple of neighbors have already protested and gotten their value lowered back to their sales price. So, now I can argue I'm too high based on both recent sales and unequal appraised value.

This is the first time I've been had to go beyond isettle with HCAD. I did an in person with an appraiser in Brazos County 10 years ago, but my only experience with HCAD is the horror stories I've heard here.

First mistake was using isettle instead of sitting down with an appraiser.

But since you're going before the board, I would not put all of your eggs into your unequally appraised basket. From the board's perspective, you are the homeowner with an extremely biased agenda (your taxes) without experience doing appraisals vs. a trained appraiser who is somewhat neutral.

My suggestion would be to bring evidence that the appraiser wasn't privy to when making their assessment. i.e. roof needs to be replaced, A/C is dead, foundation is jacked up, etc.

At the very least, bring photos of these big ticket items. Even better if you have estimates to repair.

You may get a nice appraiser who gives you a reduction on the spot. Because again, without extenuating circumstances, the board is going to side with the trained profession every time.

That's not true

I appreciate the info, but that's not going to work. The houses in my neighborhood have all been built since 2011. There are no foundation issues, dead A/C units, or roofs that need to be replaced. To make that argument would simply be dishonest.

The data clearly shows HCAD over-valued our houses compared to what houses actually sold for. Even houses that sold in November and December of 2022 are valued anywhere from 15-20% over the actual sales price.

I gave an example in post on the previous page - a house that sold on Nov 29 for $500k has a 2023 market value of over $600k. They've done this to house after house after house, and the $/sq ft are all pretty consistent.

Looking at the data, it literally looks like they took the most expensive sale, which also happened to be the biggest house with a huge pool and outdoor kitchen and pavilion and applied that $/sq ft to every house, regardless of size or pool status.

I know they are adjusting some values back down to purchase prices because there are a couple of sold comps whose HCAD records have already been updated, but not everyone has protested or had their protest processed, yet.

To make matters worse, the analysis report for my house does not identify any specific sales comps. They simply sent me ALL of the sold properties in my 'hood going back to March of 2020.

They also included 17 pages of lot sales. But the vast majority of them are in the gated/golf course portion of the development where the lots can be 1 acre+ and cost over $1MM. They also included sales of commercially-zoned property in the report, one of which was a $10MM transaction.

So, my best argument really is that they over-valued everyone's properties compared to actual comparable sales and point out that they've already corrected some properties. I know my odds aren't good, but I have nothing to lose. This protest will only affect my market value as my appraised is low thanks to multiple years of protesting and the 10% cap.

They've already admitted they missed the mark on my house by over $50k by virtue of my iSettle offer, and based on the data in the reports they sent me, iSettle is still too high by about $30k.

Regardless of the outcome, it will be wash, rinse, repeat again next year.

I thought this might be helpful...

https://therealdeal.com/texas/2023/05/04/big-appraiser-is-watching-you/

It begs the question - why not move to full disclosure of real estate purchases so there's not as much guesswork. As a practical matter though, I'm sure the CADs would still try to f us...

Does a pool count towards the land value or the improvement value?

Red Pear Realty said:

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I thought this might be helpful...

https://therealdeal.com/texas/2023/05/04/big-appraiser-is-watching-you/

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How much did the author of that article get knocked off his appraisal in exchange for writing that steaming pile of garbage?

IDK about Tarrant Co, but HCAD has the exact sales price of every single MLS transaction. They send you the reports with the sales prices when they give you your iSettle offer.

The idea that they gave to get "creative" is nonsense. And the idea that homeowners are intentionally lowballing when they protest is garbage. Maybe that was the case in the past, but this year we are just trying to get market values based on actual sales prices, rather than the 15-20% above comps that we've been slapped with.

They have the data. They are just ignoring it.

High Functioning Moron said:

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Does a pool count towards the land value or the improvement value?

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In my area , it doesn't appear to affect land value. They do an adjustment to the improvement value to account for a pool.

I did notice that larger lots are assessed at a much lower $/sq ft in my area. 7000k-ish is likely to be $13-14/sq ft while 11k-14k is less than $10/sq ft.

TXTransplant said:

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High Functioning Moron said:

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Does a pool count towards the land value or the improvement value?

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In my area , it doesn't appear to affect land value. They do an adjustment to the improvement value to account for a pool.

I did notice that larger lots are assessed at a much liver $/sq ft in my area. 7000k-ish is likely to be $13-14/sq ft while 11k-14k is less than $10/sq ft.

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They will assess the first xxx sq ft at 100% and then the remainder at a lower %.

Probably in your case, the first 5000 sq ft at 100% and the remainder at 50%.

That's what I figured. It doesn't seem fair to make someone with a lot almost 2x mine pay twice what I pay. But I did expect there to be a bit more of a differential. The bigger lots did originally sell for a premium and resales have been higher valued.

Off topic but I thought someone here could point me in the right direction…

We just received our appraisal on our second home in Rockport (Aransas County). Huge increase, as expected unfortunately, around 20%. Does anyone know of a tax protest company that works in that area? Cross posted from the Gulf Coast forum. Thanks!

Have owned my home for many years and have the homestead exemption. We are considering doing major renovations; expand footprint, change rooflines and update kitchen. Permits will be pulled so HCAD will have full awareness of it.

Do major renovations null the 10% cap for a year and HCAD can set my appraised value equal to the new "market value"? Or does it stay intact and I will it just see 10% increase each year until I reach the market value?

Yes

Sea Speed said:

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aTm_bomb said:

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Have owned my home for many years and have the homestead exemption. We are considering doing major renovations; expand footprint, change rooflines and update kitchen. Permits will be pulled so HCAD will have full awareness of it.

Do major renovations null the 10% cap for a year and HCAD can set my appraised value equal to the new "market value"? Or does it stay intact and I will it just see 10% increase each year until I reach the market value?

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Prepare your anus

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Anything new will be assessed at full value they think and won't be capped at 10%. Anything untouched will still be capped. In other words, prepare your anus.

aTm_bomb said:

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Have owned my home for many years and have the homestead exemption. We are considering doing major renovations; expand footprint, change rooflines and update kitchen. Permits will be pulled so HCAD will have full awareness of it.

Do major renovations null the 10% cap for a year and HCAD can set my appraised value equal to the new "market value"? Or does it stay intact and I will it just see 10% increase each year until I reach the market value?

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If you have a good contractor, they will list the permit value as the cost of materials only to help lessen the pounding you're going to get from HCAD.

As I suspected, anus is duly prepared.

MAYBE, since work would start late this year, I don't get hit on Jan 1, 2024, and HCAD can no longer pretend that valuations are skyrocketing I'll catch a slowdown through the next year into Jan 1, 2025? One can dream.