High Functioning Moron said:

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Question for smart people. Let's say that I purchased a home in November 2022 and never got around to sending in the homestead exemption because I am lazy moron. New home was appraised at $200K in 2022 and is now $320K for 2023. Can I still submit the homestead exemption and have the 2022 value of $200K capped at 10%, or did I miss my window?

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Your cap will start in 2024. You still have to own the home one full calendar year before the cap starts.

Up 10% in Copperfield.

Up 14.6% in 77079, capped at 10%

Looking forward to hopefully getting another year of an informal settlement offer via email to avoid the trip to HCAD.

InnocentBystander99 said:

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High Functioning Moron said:

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Question for smart people. Let's say that I purchased a home in November 2022 and never got around to sending in the homestead exemption because I am lazy moron. New home was appraised at $200K in 2022 and is now $320K for 2023. Can I still submit the homestead exemption and have the 2022 value of $200K capped at 10%, or did I miss my window?

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Your cap will start in 2024. You still have to own the home one full calendar year before the cap starts.

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I thought the law changed on that last legislative session.

YellAg2004 said:

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InnocentBystander99 said:

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High Functioning Moron said:

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Question for smart people. Let's say that I purchased a home in November 2022 and never got around to sending in the homestead exemption because I am lazy moron. New home was appraised at $200K in 2022 and is now $320K for 2023. Can I still submit the homestead exemption and have the 2022 value of $200K capped at 10%, or did I miss my window?

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Your cap will start in 2024. You still have to own the home one full calendar year before the cap starts.

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I thought the law changed on that last legislative session.

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That part did not change.

High Functioning Moron,

If the home you purchased did not have an existing homestead exemption (ie the previous owner did not already claim it on the property as of January 1, 2022), you can apply for tax year 2022 and receive a prorated exemption from the date you occupied it. In most of Harris County, the exemption is about a 20% savings, and it will be prorated for the 1-2 months of 2022 after you bought it, not for the whole year, so you'll only save a few percent refund off the 2022 bill that you paid. (If you are over 65, this could be a more significant portion)

January 1, 2023, the first actual assessment date that you lived in the home and owned the property, will still be your baseline year, it will not be capped with the 10% limitation until the January 1, 2024 valuation (if applicable) unless the CAD screws it up.

77056. Condo up 50% WTF. It's $100K overvalued. I'll sell it today at that number

Up almost 25% in 77007. This is ridiculous.

Can't raise taxes so they assess it higher.

20% total.

I will pack my bags for this number right now and go buy the house I want for this number on the market in a better neighborhood.

22.4% market and 10% max appraised in Katy. Guarantee I couldn't sell my house for the market rate or anywhere close to it. Problem is market is $63K over appraised so doubtful to be able to get both down.

Both 77009 properties still pending but 77008 investment property up nearly 40%

Appraised: 10%
Market: 13%

In 77345

Up 15% in 77008 too.

Used to protest all by myself.
Then used Jubally, but still a hassle arguing it.
Then used O'Connor, but they seemed to really half@ss it.
Trying Rainbolt this year based on good results I saw they got for others.

Mr McGibblets is a poster on this forum who does tax protests for a living. Give him a shot?

O'Connor seems to mail it in. Doing myself via Jubally, I have outperformed them.

Fairfield (77433) - market +29%, appraised +10%. Last year I fought a huge market jump but didn't have the comps to justify dropping the appraised. Hammered me worse this year. Will have to find someone to pull me comps. I know in my area houses are staying on the market much longer than 2020-21 but I'm not sure if the final sale prices have been any different.

Red Pear Realty said:

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Primary residence in Oak Forest up 29%

2022 - $475,317
2023 - $613,743

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also in Oak Forest/77018

Market +14%
Appraised +10%

At least last year Oconnor was able to get me below appraised and saved like $30. My rentals they didn't even try, but not a lot of hope there.

I don't understand how my structure increases in value when it is over 100 years old. I can see them making an argument for the land but not the structure.

What is the angle for protesting the values? I am sure it depends on the situation, but is there a general strategy or set of strategies?

Is it comparing similar houses to one another and finding ones that are valued less and arguing that your house should be valued the same? Do you argue that your house is a sh/t hole and the "improvements" are actually a detriment to the value? Like if you have a pool, but it was poorly maintained and needs a significant amount of work. Or, if the previously remodeled kitchen and bathrooms were so poorly done that they have to be completely redone.

What I do is go into HCAD and pull all of the info in my neighborhood and put it into an excel spreadsheet (it's only like 6 streets, so not a lot). You can simply highlight, copy, and paste for each street, so not too difficult. Then I calculate the value per sq/ft for each, and then filter by similar square footage to mine (+/- 200 sq/ft). If I find mine is higher than the average, I start there. I also look to see who has a pool or not via Google Maps, and use that as well since I don't have a pool. Especially if the higher values have pools.

I also have a few comps pulled, but there haven't been a lot of sales in our neighborhood in the last year. The ones that did go on the market sat for months.

https://hellowoodlands.com/township-adopts-2023-budget-and-sets-historically-low-tax-rate/

airboatag said:

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I don't understand how my structure increases in value when it is over 100 years old. I can see them making an argument for the land but not the structure.

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Supply, demand, inflation. It may be 100 years old but the wood, nails, and structure dont have the same value they did 100 years ago.

From a cost perspective, there are basically two factors, replacement cost minus depreciation.

Normally we just think of physical depreciation and therefore something getting older is worth less all the time, but thats more simplistic than it is. Replacement cost can increase, if it becomes more and more expensive to build new structures, older already existing structures become more valuable as well. Depreciation is also not just physical depreciation, but can be thought of as a combination of condition (physical depreciation), desirability (economic obsolescence), utility (functional obsolescence). The last two, utility and especially desirability do not necessarily run one way. In certain situations older homes can actually become more desirable than they previously had been. In addition the physical depreciation part tends to reach a maximum level, since the property owner will be constantly curing and maintaining the property to a certain level to keep it livable. Think about like cars, we think of them depreciating over time for our family cars, because they are just standard replaceable, but classic cars dont change value always downward in the same way because of their desirability and level of maintenance they are kept at.

77004 up 13.8%. Don't have a homestead since it's a rental.

Quick plug for appealpropertytax.com. As an out of stater, I appreciate not lifting a finger and just paying 40% if the savings. Think they've been successful for me 8 years straight. This year will be interesting though.

Still pending in 77096 while all my neighbors have been hit hard. Had a permit pulled for some exterior foundation corrections... Not sure if that is enough to override the 10% cap. All it did was keep my eaves from sinking to China.

aTm_bomb said:

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Still pending in 77096 while all my neighbors have been hit hard. Had a permit pulled for some exterior foundation corrections... Not sure if that is enough to override the 10% cap. All it did was keep my eaves from sinking to China.

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24% market, 10% appraisal in 77096.

I can usually argue that they've appraised mine too high by using comparable sales comps. I'm a small house (<2400 sq ft) I'm a neighborhood with homes up to 4000-5000 sq ft, many of them with pools. In my opinion, HCAD doesn't use fair comps when doing the values. They like to just take the highest sales price and slap that on everyone.

I argued last year by basically getting the sales price for an identical home that sold on my street and saying my home was unfairly valued higher than that number. There was another house just like mine that also sold, but it had a pool. Mine does not. But it was clear from my HCAD value that they had used that higher comp to value my house. They lowered the value to what the house with no pool sold for when I protested. Nothing else has sold since then, so I'll probably make the same argument this year.

TXTransplant said:

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I can usually argue that they've appraised mine too high by using comparable sales comps. I'm a small house (<2400 sq ft) I'm a neighborhood with homes up to 4000-5000 sq ft, many of them with pools. In my opinion, HCAD doesn't use fair comps when doing the values. They like to just take the highest sales price and slap that on everyone.

I argued last year by basically getting the sales price for an identical home that sold on my street and saying my home was unfairly valued higher than that number. There was another house just like mine that also sold, but it had a pool. Mine does not. But it was clear from my HCAD value that they had used that higher comp to value my house. They lowered the value to what the house with no pool sold for when I protested. Nothing else has sold since then, so I'll probably make the same argument this year.

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This was how I protested last year - proving their comps were invalid.

The downside to this is sales prices are up. I had successfully protested my market value multiple times before, and it was pretty low compared to what I would have sold for, even before the market went crazy. So, I still had to accept a pretty big increase in my market value using this method. But that increase was significantly less that what HCAD initially stuck me with.

If you argue unequal value based on the HCAD values of other houses in your hood, that's a little different. But I live in relatively new construction, so we don't have remodels and stuff like that. The only real variables are size and pool or no pool.

So if it's an investment property (no exemptions) the appraised value increase is not capped at 10%?