Tax appraisal protest time is near

O

orangecat

1,000+ Posts
Any tips from anybody who has protested and won?

Here is my situation. I think I'm gonna get a good low appraisal.

Our neighborhood, gone down in price significantly, for example 3100 sf. house is for sale for $134,900. But our house is smaller, listed at 2306 sf. Only one house in our zip code listed for that sf, many upgrades, is for sale for 141,900.

couple of other 3000 sf houses for sale around 140k.

I'm thinking show the average price per sf in our neighborhood for sale, then point out how long they've been on market to point out that the true market value is what they will sell for, not the list price. So it's actually more like 95%ish of list price.

This should get my value down to the mid 120s.

that' s assuming they give a hoot about the house with many upgrades. Ours has 0 updgrades, I can point that out also.
 
Exhibit B: we just bought a new house a month ago, and our tax appraisal came in about $40K higher than the purchase price. Can/should I protest? This is Westlake we're talking about, and while we clearly got the house for a good price, isn't the actual sale of a house a good indicator of value? The owners had multiple offers, all less than our winning offer.
 
Astrovol, take your closing docs to the appeal and they will lower it.

Happened to us and they appraised it at over 100k more than our purchase price, they looked at our docs and lowered it to our purchase price on the spot.

This is huge because it becomes the basis from which you are taxed and the taxable value is capped at a 10% increase per year.
 
also, I 've never appealed before. do you just submit your documents and they decide or do you have to attend a meeting and they ask you questions about how you decided?
 
My Wilco appraisal actually went down $6k from last year....plus I turn 65 in December, so we'll get a partial cap on our house property taxes.
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One of my wife's friends is on the Travis County appeals board. Good luck with her.
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I am in the middle of a refi and my house was appraised for 25-30K below the property tax appraisal.

I have my story ready.
 
update, looked at my new appraisal online, it did go down, but I think I can get it down much lower. Only problem is the protest section of the website tells me to look for comparable sales as close to January 1 as possible.

This means I'm at the mercy of the realtors out there?


What incentive is there for them to give me comps? I guess I can hint that I will use them if they can get me some comps.


I can see it now. The people at the appraisal district can say, okay there's this $134,900 comp that's larger than your house, but it's May, and we don't care about that because the values are as of January 1.

And I guess the more important question. What happens to that $134,900 comp? Suppose it sells this summer for $134,000. It doesn't help anybody's comp for appraisal because it sells in the middle of the year.

Also, January 1, think about it the slowest time of the year for real estate sales is when they determine value. I would think this would be the hardest time of the year to get comps.
 
If you're looking to move in a year or two would it be beneficial to protest your house tax appraisal or keep it as high as you can for selling purposes?
 
My experience. Long wait. Appraiser pulled up several comparable sales in the area over the last year which were all about 20% below my appraisal. They lowered my appraisal by about 5% but it was still above the comparable sales. They said I had a view the comparables didn't have.
 
hip, are you saying that the person at the appraisal district pulled up comps over the past year, not just around January 1?

So the realtors have the comps, the gov't has the comps, and the public is the only entity that doesn't have any comps.


Boy do we need to get a law passed that will allow comps to be researched. I think it needs to be common knowledge.
I think I read somewhere that other states have public knowledge of comps.
 
We had an appraisal for refinance and our greedy tax district came in 8% higher. Not as bad as some of you but geez, our prices have been stagnant for a year now. They look at our area like a gravy train.
 
just read it again in today' s dallas news. the bill that was introduced to allow public access to comps has been pretty much DOA.

Also, question for anybody. Does condition of soil affect comp?

We just planted a Crape Myrtlet(mother's day gift from 5th grade son), and I remembered why we don't have any trees on side of house. Watered the plant, within a minute of slow watering the hole is completely filled and the water is not going down. IOW, our house is sitting on solid rock. I had to turn off the water or it would run off into the street.
 
OK, here's my situation.

I bought a house from a builder who built it in '05 and lived there until we bought it last year. The tax appraisal was roughly 170. We paid about 450, but there are no real comps around, at all. I can get into the details if necessary, but we were still paying the lower amount last year.

In any case, they brought it up o 430 for this year. How screwed am I? Can I fight it at all? No comps, marekt has gone down? Any advice?
 
How do you fight it if you live in Dallas County? Any hints? I'll go check the Dallas county page of course.
 
Update. Yesterday I did the informal review process, Collin County. not a bad wait, maybe 45 minutes. talked to a man, I just arrived with my comp,(the house for sale, listed at $42. per square foot) he said foreclosures don't count. Then he backed up and said even pre-foreclosures don't count. Then he said let's take a look at the sales in the neighborhood, he had to go back to September '08 to find the most recent sale. it was comparable to what they have the appraisal, I said wait, don't you have to be close to January 1, then he explained their time slot is April 1 to March 31. They are allowed to use any and all comps during this time, but they try to stay close to January 1.

I asked what happens if there are no comps during the year, he says then they look at a comparable neighborhood, then look at how the city is doing as a whole, etc.

I understand what he is saying, and agree with most of it. At the end he changed his story just slightly and said that when the pre-foreclosure sells it will have a slight impact on next year's I didn't press him on that, should have, but at least now I have an understanding.

Now I have a few questions, if I have time I might go back. (They are open late on Thursday)

1. If pre-foreclosures and foreclosures don't count, how can this one count for next year? I think the answer is that because the house sells for less, it can possibly drag down future regular listings because realtors will see the sales price.

2. What happens if you have only maybe three homes sold in 12 months, and one is a pre-foreclosure?

3. How do you know after the fact that a certain house was a pre-foreclosure or a foreclosure?
 
Don't focus only on sales comps when looking at your appraisal. There are two arguments you can make when protesting your appraisal.

1. The market value they've assigned is wrong; or
2. You're not being treated fairly and equitably relative to other similarly situated houses (particularly in your neighborhood).

I've had the most success in lowering my appraisals using the 2nd argument. Do your homework and make sure you check and see what your neighbors' homes are appraised at. If they're comparable then you can fall back on argument 1 (if applicable).
 
Boo, they are consistent. I checked the appraisals from my street, via website, and they are all in the same ballpark.

My only hope is that some houses sell this year(highly doubtful in my opinion)
 
Add us to the "we just bought our house an they appraised it 30K higher than we paid" boat... whoo hoo... something fun to do this summer....
 
Did the protest thing on my own one year and was turned down. Tax board uses selling price per square foot for comps; they have our proerty listed at 300 to 400 sq ft bigger than it really is. Their numbers are obviously incorrect because they list the second floor as larger than the first; we have a cathedral ceiling living room meaning the 2nd floor is half to two-thirds the size of the downstairs. I did the cubicle thing at Travis County but then had to go to WilCo because we are in RRISD and the school district has priority; in our case Austin and Travis use whatever WilCo determines. Went before the WilCo panel and they completely refused to accept my explanation that the square footage was obviously wrong.

Of course, realtors use "square footage per taxing district" when selling properties, so having the square footage permanently reduced on the tax rolls is of arguable benefit.
 
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