thinking about who to line up for next protest.
I have gone through 3 so far and haven't really been impressed with any of them.
oconner was the most recent. They did reduce it but said it wasn't enough to change my tax payment so they didn't charge.

texas tax protest the year before.

The ray tax group the year before that.
of all 3 they got the most off.

but to be fair it could have been just that year for each of them.

Just wondering who else is out there that might be any good.

Why not do it yourself?  Do your own research and brush up on your negotiating skills and have at it!  Contact your real estate person that you used...they should be able to help you with comps!

I did that one year with a new appraisal from my refi. They told me foad, those are worthless and we say it is what it is worth.

figured why waste my morning if that is how they are going to be. let someone else do it for free if they can't do any better.

so looking for people that can do it better.

3rd year with Tiffany Hamil and no problems.

They seem to be one of the few that are only flat fee.
Their disclaimer is a pretty low bar for dropping price.
I know you said no issues, but does that mean they have always been able to drop your amounts each year?

To put it nicely most tax agents do very little for homeowners. You are better off doing it yourself. It would also do you some good on learning how property values are calculated and how the property tax system works. You may find your value isn't to far off.

That has not been my experience. They tend to get the value down more than we can as an individual. IMO it is due to them having a working relationship with the people at the tax office.

well from my 5 years of working with them it has not been my experience, im glad its working for you. i sit on the other side of the desk and they yield very little.

its a game like any other.

far off or not, fair or not doesn't seem to matter.
having an appraisal in hand from that month didn't matter to them, they dismissed it entirely.

If you can't sell your house for the appraised amount, it shouldn't be that amount.
I get taxes pay for everything, but we shouldn't have to pretend my house is worth more to get more taxes.
get it raised the right way. If no one wants to approve the rate hike, spend less.

I have done it a couple of times, but that last time was the proof it was rigged and not in my favor.
If I work with the protest people and they don't get anything off, I don't pay and I didn't waste half my day at the tax office waiting for them to tell me the comps I found don't count or the apprasal I had didn't count or whatever the song and dance will be next year.

while I do agree, sales have gone up in my area, it didn't go up 10 percent every year since I have lived here. and when it went down, my appraised value didn't go down either.
When the bottom fell out of the housing market, I get that dfw didn't go down as much as the other places, but I couldn't get what they said the house was worth even on a good day.

what town/county do you live in?

collin county.

i figured...good luck with that!  kicking myself, I should have bought that house in 2009 ($165k)...stupid money today!

This Collin County resident is grateful that I'm paying tax on the assessed rather than market value haha. If you are within 30 minute drive time of a job market, I'd be surprised to see a meaningful reduction right now.

Maybe I've been fortunate. Here's the history on mine.

125k the year prior to buying
117k was the price I paid
120.5k didn't fight it
111k first year having an agent fight it
105k
100k
110k
112k
120k $74 sq ft, my neighbor just sold for $122 sq ft

who did you use? I might have missed it but didn't see anything you your reply.
if you don't want to post, please im or email me.

sending pm but I think she just does Denton County.

Thanks and sadly that is the case.

I used Resolute Property Tax Solutions.

They saved me $250. Not much but better than nothing. I live in Frisco and house prices here are going through the roof. I'm surprised they came down any.

I used them because I was too lazy to do it myself.

Thanks. I might give them a try.

I found that my property tax estimate is based on incorrect information on my house (they have me at 3800sq/ft instead of 3200sq/ft).  I'm putting in a review request myself.

That is different and not usually an issue.
For instance one year they thought I built a pool. easy enough to have them drop it.

not sure how back taxes would work though if you have been paying on the wrong footage for a while.

Can you point to some resources for this?  When I asked what the process is I was pretty much told to go pound sand.  Travis county has the most non-transparent process I have ever run into when dealing with a government entity.  They simply refuse to part with the info.

Challenging the assessment myself was a joke.  The 3 man panel all had vested interests in high valuations (real estate salesman, developer, & general contractor).  I was able to reduce things a little, but it wasn't enough to pay my wages for half a day.

It's impossible to really know where you stand when they refuse to let you know the process they use to arrive at the numbers.

Here is where I would start. Mark you calendar for the beginning of May. You may or may not get a notice of value, it depends on if certain critieria are met. Your value increasing is one of those. Once you have determined what your 2017 market value for all the properties you own are, try and schedule an appt with an appropriate  appraiser. The main types are: residential, land, commercial, and business personal property. The first thing I would do is ask for an appraisal card for all your properties and next make sure you have all applicable exemptions. Then ask the appraiser to translate the shorthand on the card to words both of y'all can understand. Every CAD is different in their terminology, trust me I know. I just took a new job at another district and I have to relearn their  new system. Once you have an understanding for what buildings you are being valued on, make sure they are physically there. Nobody is perfect and lot lines arnt painted on the ground. There should be some line items regarding deprecation. Physical depreciation is the main one with functional being above and beyond the physical condition (cracked slab, leaks in roof, etc) get a feel for what the numeric value means as far as the loss in value. Now is where things get fun. Your value is based off of sales of similar types of property in a similar geographic region. If you really want to bore yourself to death look up USPAP standard 6. But the sales are the problem. Texas is a non-disclosure state. Unless the CAD has something special they may only get 30-40% of the sales for the county. Now that number is not a good number either because not every sale can be used. Look up arms length vs non arms length sales and the tax code definition of market value (tax code 23.01 link at bottom). So know you have a working understanding on how your value is crunched. Take your cards home and get the contact info from the applicable appraiser(s) you talked to and verify the measurements. If you feel a measurement is wrong then redraw the entire structure (hint: second story's in homes are the worst) to make sure it squares. Most if not all software rounds to the nearest foot and measurements are taken from exterior wall to exterior wall. Provided the deprecation, classification, and measurements are correct you make the determination if that value is more than the market can bear.  

So then you need to file your notice of protest and have a hearing before an appraisal review board, basically you need to prove the CAD is wrong in how they determined your value. If your gripe is on taxes then you will get nowhere. One thing that helps a lot is bring lots of pictures. After your ARB meeting you can further challenge the value through binding arbitration or district court. I've sat through some goofy board hearings, the boards are typically very fickle and inconsistent. And lastly the board hearings are not the time in which the process needs to be explained. If you have questions about that, you should have addressed it before that hearing.

The real problem we have had is realtors and taxing entities. Realtors eat what they kill, it's in their best interest to list a property as high as possible to earn the highest commission. As they do and people buy at the higher value, values go up. Last year I took a survey of 110 listed properties in the county i came from. Using the updated 2016 value 9 where below our value and 5 where out of state owners(possible non market value sale) One was right at our value. The other 100 were listed above our value. Using the full array of numbers the realtors  were about 22% above our value. So what that means is if the 2017 buyers don't talk down the owners by 23% value will continue to rise.

Taxing entities are the next issue. They set their rates on a value. So if you can visualize it as values increase the tax rate should decrease to generate the same tax revenue. BUT THE TAXING ENTITIES DONT LOWER THE RATE. They bring in gravy money because they aren't lowering the rates. If you need to see this mathematically I can show you.  

So that's why people want to hire a tax agent. But keep in mind the tax savings in dollars vs the tax agent fees. Taxes are based on a rate. Typically around 2%. Some places are higher and some are lower. So you have to weigh what I would cost to higher a tax agent (some are flat fee, some are a percentage of saving) vs not. If the agent saves you $400 and you pay the agent $400 it's a wash. And most agents do very little to try and lower the value or maybe I just came from a pissant county and it wasn't worth their time.

So if you made it this far congratulations, you should have a very basic understanding of the appraisal process and theory. But the best thing is develop some kind of relationship with an appraiser at the CAD and get an understanding on how values are calculated.


http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/Docs/TX/htm/TX.23.htm

I would even go further to say that if you understand this then you know more about the property Texas system then the senators and congressmen who write the law

Thank you,  your post is much more informative than the half hour meeting I had with a tax office employee trying to figure this aspect out.