Even how the appraisers measure a neighborhood seems arbitrary.

I couldn't find any homes in my area that had a "quality" rating above "average" but looks like your area does. There's a "multiplier" associated with all of those grades that determines the final values so they all count.

I see homes in my neighborhood that were marginally remodeled 15 years ago, but were coded as "total" and stayed that way. They're currently being valued at an ~60% premium to my place. Totally bonkers.

The key is to use their own guidelines against them in the protest

This is HCAD's definition of "Total Remodel" (credit to Cru for sharing this info for me many years ago)



vs. "extensive"



In my case, there was an addition in the back the was clearly "newish" but the rest of the home was much more in line with "partial" or "extensive". I showed pictures that illustrated these points and they agreed. Essentially, a "total" renovation is determined to be equal to (or more expensive) than new construction, from a cost perspective. Shockingly, HCAD is a bit loosy goosy with these grades.

I asked them how they came up with the "total" designation and they pointed to the listing agent's description that the home was "totally remodeled". We agents are never known to exaggerate of course!

FBCAD has 2023 out. 17% Market

Thanks for these definitions. "Extensive" is pretty much the exact definition of the remodel done to my house.

Got my homeowners and auto renewals today. I'm regretting buying this house and eff Harris County. I guess it's time to make the agent earn his money.

Yep. Renewing my homeowners right now and insuring in Harris County sucks balls.

What's the % increase on auto and home premiums in Harris county?

45% auto - EL-OH-EFFING EL!!! Got a new car in January, so expected an increase, but it's an effing 4-cyl Accord, not a Porsche. Way too much, especially for 2 clean records and no teens.

28% homeowners - Yep, not happening.

With this, I'm >$15k/yr in taxes and insurance. Ridiculous.

Shop your auto. I got nailed with Geico and moved to a much better rate.

Somehow I've managed to only get 6% increases on my annual homeowners premium 6 month auto insurance premium.

My BF's homeowners policy was just cancelled (company went bankrupt) and he's looking at a 30-50% increase to get a new policy.

I use Goosehead, so hopefully they can find me something better for both. They have been able to the last couple years. If not, I'll talk with other agents.

You're in MoCo, right. I'm less than a mile from the MoCo/Harris line, but I'm punished for living in Harris.

aTm2004 said:

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I use Goosehead, so hopefully they can find me something better for both. They have been able to the last couple years. If not, I'll talk with other agents.

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Goosehead, Liere, etc, nobody could find me a better deal. 40% jump in Homeowners sucks

aTm2004 said:

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You're in MoCo, right. I'm less than a mile from the MoCo/Harris line, but I'm punished for living in Harris.

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Nope. I'm in Harris. Right near the county line, but on the worse side of it.

30% market 77079
Entire neighborhood got bent over. 20-40% for everyone.
One house on my street went from $1 to $1.6!

Something has to change.
People have to be reaching a breaking point

Same here in 77079. 34% increase in market/appraisal value. It's an even bigger kick in the nuts as I am currently working overseas and renting my property which led to loss of homestead.

I normally protest myself but thinking about going with a property tax consultant…what is the Texags recommendation these days?

Tormentos said:

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Same here in 77079. 34% increase in market/appraisal value. It's an even bigger kick in the nuts as I am currently working overseas and renting my property which led to loss of homestead.

I normally protest myself but thinking about going with a property tax consultant…what is the Texags recommendation these days?

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How did they find out? You can retain your homestead exemption up to two years if working overseas.

Mail being forwarded I would assume

Yep mail forwarding.

Tell me more about the homestead exemption if working overseas. I reviewed all the exemptions and didn't see any mention of this. Is this in writing anywhere on HCADs website?

Texas Property Tax Exemptions https://comptroller.texas.gov/taxes/property-tax/docs/96-1740.pdf

A qualified homeowner does not lose his or her residence homestead exemption if the homeowner does not establish a different principal residence, intends to return and occupy the residence and is temporarily absent for a period of less than two years.

Couple of questions about iFile…

Does a human being actually review the submission, or are they evaluated by some sort of computer algorithm based on the price you submit? Just trying to get an idea for how much weight the supporting evidence is given, considering it's limited to 700 characters.

Anecdotal experience - in the past, how have comps for the current year been considered when protesting?

Here is the scenario - BF's neighbors sold to Open Door for somewhere around $450k last summer (home was not listed on HAR). OD put in some work and listed it in August at $489k. By Jan 2023, it had been reduced to $439,900, and it finally sold last week for $400k.

BF's house is 700 sq ft smaller and was valued for 2023 at $430k. Even though it's bigger, neighbor's house is a comp because both have pools.

I'm not sure if they look at it, but I attached an excel file "showing my work" to the protest package when I submitted my protest.

My guess, based on my last couple of years protesting is they have an algorithm that identifies "comps" that can be used to justify their numbers. That's why I have successfully argued their comps as being invalid repeatedly.

I forgot you can attach stuff. I've never done that, but for my house I'm usually just arguing one or two comps and can squeeze it in to the 700 character box.

I've had good luck using known sales comps from HAR, but I'm wondering how they will approach this one.

Even though the Open Door transaction wasn't on HAR, I'm sure HCAD knows the sale price because the current HCAD value of that house is very close to what OD purchased it for.

which OD transaction are you referencing? If the new one was on HAR, it should be fair game.

Diggity said:

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which OD transaction are you referencing? If the new one was on HAR, it should be fair game.

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Sorry, I realize that is confusing. The original OD purchase from the previous owners for $450-something was not on HAR. The sale last week by OD to the new owners is on HAR, and you can look up the price history. There were 14 reductions between August and Feb.

To complicate the matter, another house on his street (3400 sq ft with a pool) sold last April for $500k. It was amazing how fast the market tanked.

So the lady I use to protest is now charging a $150.00 in addition to a % of the tax savings as I suspect it's because she's seeing so many protest not winning much as RE values have skyrocketed.

Who do yall suggest? Who is McGibblets co?

Ducks4brkfast said:

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So the lady I use to protest is now charging a $150.00 in addition to a % of the tax savings as I suspect it's because she's seeing so many protest not winning much as RE values have skyrocketed.

Who do yall suggest? Who is McGibblets co?

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https://www.hataxgroup.com/

Pretty hard to stomach paying to try to get the ridiculous market price down while still paying the same taxes regardless due to the appraisal with 10% cap.

Sazerac said:

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Pretty hard to stomach paying to try to get the ridiculous market price down while still paying the same taxes regardless due to the appraisal with 10% cap.

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That's not hard at all if you run the math.

In my experience it takes a lot of effort to work residential accounts in what I will call..."the right way." Its more than a couple man hours for each account if you are looking up the comps, doing your own comparable sales analysis, doing your own equal and uniform analysis, talking with the owner to check on the condition, whether or not there is any unaddressed deferred maintenance or repair estimates, do an actual analysis of the CAD's work, find problems with their grades, conditions, adjustments and whether they are correct relatively speaking both for the subject and each comparable. Then preparing the best argument to present to a CAD appraiser or Review Board in a manner that they will actually 1) understand, and 2) agree with. Then you have a small amount of time dealing with it informally, and a single day of ARB hearings for every 50-60 accounts that you take to the board.

So if you have a consultant that is, in theory going to work his ass off. He can appear every day at the appraisal district for about 15 weeks. So in theory one single agent could do like 4000 houses doing like 50 hearings a day, but thats likely an insane amount. Without cutting any corners on "the right way" it would take that agent 200 work weeks to prepare for that hearing season, at a couple hours familiarizing himself with each one. There's about 30 weeks in the year before hearings start and during the season, so to do it that way the agent would really need himself and 6 employees working for him every day for those 30 weeks and during the hearing season to prepare in this way.

This hypothetical agents total portfolio would be about $1.2 billion in value, ($300k each lets say). If he is amazing and gets each client 5% off (in most cases this is like 15% of but the first 10% doesn't save the client any money), that would be $60,000,000 in reductions (for the typical $300k house thats a $15,000 reduction on all of em). This would be about $1.2 million in tax (this is less than it seems it would be based on the tax rate, because in Harris most jurisdictions, especially where high value properties are located, give a 20% homestead exemption, so accounts with those, 1/5 of his reduction doesn't save the owner any money. Lets say he charges 40%. 40% of 1.2M is $480,000 in billings or about $70,000 for himself and each of his 6 employees.

In reality its way less than this because we haven't even talked about overhead, paying for all the administrative and equipment costs, the time spent making sure all the correct forms are filed, the cost it takes to actually collect all 4000 bills, the number of those 4000 people that would be impossible to collect from, because they sold the property already at some point earlier in the year and they dont care anymore, or maybe they just are the type of person that doesn't pay.

I think it's an impossible business model, it can't be done. Those that do it, spend a lot of money up front to basically have software or something that does most of the legwork, but the numbers it spits out can be just as wrong as the appraisal district. Consultants that do residential have to maximize their account value, but also minimize their effort on those accounts to actually make money doing it, IMO. The typical like single agent would probably have more like 500-1000 accounts at most, and he protests them all and takes what he can get informally with no effort, does minimal prep for a hearing, and/or just uses his brain on the fly in hearings to try and either bluff or rapidly create compelling arguments in the handful of minutes he has looking over the account between hearings. If working solely on contingency, I think that agent probably bills nothing at all for more than half of their residential accounts.

How effective would the argument be that their appraisals suck in general? Looking at current listings in HAR and the market values in HCAD for houses around me, every listing is under the HCAD market value.

I get what you're saying, but I don't think anyone paying what amounts to a couple hundred bucks is/should be expecting much more than an "automated" approach.

I would also imagine the average person protesting would be equal to (or higher) than the average sale price, which was a bit over $400K at the end of the year. That should help the numbers a bit, but still sounds like a drag.

Brenner said:

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How effective would the argument be that their appraisals suck in general? Looking at current listings in HAR and the market values in HCAD for houses around me, every listing is under the HCAD market value.

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I have wondered about this, actually. If you could capture like every single listing in the county as it existed on January 1, then pair it with the noticed value of those properties, what the delta is for literally everything that was for sale on January 1. I think in most years that data would be useless, but I'm not so sure about this one.

I think the CAD could easily just claim you were cherry picking and a board would ignore it, unless you have a huge amount of helpful data. I'm not sure that even every listing in just one neighborhood would work, but it might if they didnt think you excluded anything.