Finally got around to opening the mail.  

To clarify, I own property in both Travis and Burnet counties. I live in the latter and this is the Travis county appraisals. Burnet's has not showed up yet. I have acreage around the house, so 1 acre of that is going to be homestead and I have no clue what numbers are going to come out of that.  

Empty home lot off of hwy 620 South. . Previous appraisal, $32K. New appraisal, $144K.

House in Anderson Mill. (Austin) previous, $315K.  New, 578K. Currently a rental.

Looks like I'll be selling both. I'll be damned if I'm going to sit still for this. Even if I dispute it and win,  I'm looking at well over a %50 increase and next year will be worse.

This is from Steve Toth.

How does land triple in value in one year? Appraisal Districts are a scam. 254 Texas Counties spend a combined $2 Billion dollars each year funding Appraisal Districts. $2 billion that could go towards;
Property tax relief
Debt reduction
Education
Securing the border

Of that $2 Billion, nearly $500 Million goes towards legal fees defending their appraisals against lawsuits brought by large corporations who have staff attorneys who’s sole job is to fight capricious valuations by County Appraisal Districts.
In the end, the corporate attorneys usually win and we as private property owners end up paying a greater share of the tax burden. I don’t know about you but, I can’t afford an in-house real estate attorney to challenge the Appraisal District each year.

Texas needs to do away with this ridiculous appraisal system that sticks it to property owners. In another month Commissioners Courts across Texas will set a new property tax rate. Invariably they will announce that they lowered your tax rate 1%. With that announcement the champagne will flow and the celebration begins over the fact that the rate went down 1%. The problem is that appraisals went up 9% leaving us with an Effective Tax Rate Increase of 8%. All 254 Commissioners Courts will then blame those pesky Appraisals Districts (that they appoint members to).

What’s the answer?
First
Go to a “Price Paid Valuation”. You pay a tax rate based on the price you paid for your home.  It stays at that value until the home is sold at which time the next homeowner pays a rate based on the current price paid. Nearly half the states in the Union pay a tax rate based on the price paid for the home.

Second
Ask your County Government to withdraw from Texas Association of Counties. TAC is a lobbying entity that’s paid for with your tax dollars to fight property tax reform and property tax relief.
No elected county or ISD  officials should support our tax dollars working against our best interests and that goes for the SJRA and waterboards as well.

Third
If the State of Texas held spending increases to population adjusted for inflation the sales tax would slowly buy down our property taxes. 2/3 of state governments pick up a minimum of 60% of school funding leaving 40% to residents. It’s the exact opposite in Texas. Our revenue growth for the state can easily achieve the same thing. It just takes discipline.

My rentals were hit pretty hard in Travis and Williamson counties.  The thing to remember is that the % increase doesn't necessary equal the same % increase in taxes paid.  The tax rate is TBD at the moment.  That being said, if it's not homesteaded with the 10% protection, they'll take more of the brunt than a homeowner with a 10% homestead cap.  Basically landlords and commercial buildings will bear the brunt of the tax bill.

Spoke to my wife’s uncle yesterday and he mentioned that the taxes on his Austin rental went up 59% this year. He said he’ll have to increase the rent $600/month just to keep up with the tax increase.

don't forget to vote
https://www.sos.texas.gov/elections/voter/2022mayballotlang.shtml

not much help, but every little bit counts.

Texas is going to tax all the Texans out of the state

Its pretty crazy what Travis County did with the appraisals for 2022.

Our place went from ~$815K in 2021 to ~$1.6M for 2022.

We are homesteaded but with the 10% taxable cap raise each year it will only take them about 6 to 7 years to get all of the current appraised value to actual taxable value.

At this point, I am just figuring my property taxes will go up 10% a year every year forever (until we sell and move).    6 to 7 years from now once they get me up  to the $1.6M in taxable valuation, it probably be appraised at $2M+ and on and on we go.

I am not sure I am even going to bother to spend the money and time to fight the valuations anymore. The valuation is so high at this point and the delta between appraised and homestead taxable cap is so great I can't imagine I could ever close it to see an actual reduction in my actual property tax bill I pay.  Might be easier to just lay down and let them flog me for the 10% taxable raise every year and who cares what crazy appraised valuation they come up with.

I guess it could be worse.....one of my neighbors two houses down took a $1.3M appraisal jump from  ~$1.1M  in 2021  to $2.4M in 2022.

It’s all about squeezing all of your money out of your pockets.

Why am I thinking there was a cap on increases?

I'm in north Hays county and have 2000sqft home on a typical small neighborhood lot.  My appraisal went up by $210k for 2022.  That's over a 50% increase from 2021.

Homestead exemption limits the taxable increase to 10% each year.

We live near RR 620 & Anderson Mill Road (near the upper reaches of Bull Creek).  I was expecting a bad result based on the news I heard on the radio . . . maybe something like 40% increase.  Our property appraisal went from $514,000 to $1,265,000 (that is 147% increase).  We signed a contract on land near Lampassas this week.  The quicker we get out of here, the better.  We are native Austinites and 5th generation Travis Country residents (my GG grandparents from both my German and Swedish sides moved here between 1870 and 1881).  Sort of sad to be leaving.  There aren't many native Austinites around any more.

We are waiting on the fair market appraisal of our current home.  Let's see how close it is to the new tax appraisal.

My house went from189 to 333k

Problem is one down the street sold for near that.  So we are fucked.  At least my commercial stuff was not hit too bad.

They have the comps.  No way to fight it now.  But we will have a bust soon and then we go back.

This would be a good time to push our legislators to change the property tax code.

Needs to go to a Price Paid Valuation. Pay property taxes on what you paid until you sale. I'll fight any valuations of my house when it goes up. It cost one amount to build. Not like I'm adding on to it. If anything, it should depreciate some as materials wear out.  

Plus it would help if we eliminated property taxes for schools. Make those sending kids to school pay. Been in several apartments that had tons of school kids and knew those parents weren't paying their share of school property taxes.

I'm not having kids nor do I want to pay for some CRT idiots running schools now.

We could invade Oklahoma!

Well you really know who’s to blame! The realtor and greedy people. I live 70 mile NE of Houston out in the country realtors are contacting land owners of larger properties that have been in the family’s for years and making outrageous offers.
They sell and then split the land into subdivision and sell at another ridiculous price.
The county life is disappearing I am surrounded by “city folk” who want to make the country life like the city.

Opened ours yesterday.  It went from 310 to 490k….

Has anyone ever filed suit over residential property and made it to the Supreme Court? Wish I had "fuck you" money.

Were you greedy when you bought your property?  Are you greedy if you sell it for what the market will bear?

Land is an investment to be bought and sold.  It’s a shame about urban sprawl, but it’s happening.  We may as well yell at the clouds as to bemoan the spread of higher density housing.

Regarding taxes, our last kid graduated from HS in 2013.  Since then we have paid at least $36k in school taxes for zero return.  At least my taxes are frozen (but not going away) since I turned 65 in 2020.

You just assume those people are greedy?  Maybe they are on the edge of being able to afford the property and are getting what they can before they lose it for much less. That happens a lot with multi-generation properties.


Yeah, The city is coming out to your area for sure.  I moved the opposite direction and no one wants to be here.  Houstonians don't want to be surrounded by row crops.

Well I sold last June and bought land in burnet.

I looked at the valuation on my old place and found out it went up 162% to 1.5 million. I bet the new owner was shocked.

My new place is ag exempt and taxed at a little over a dollar an acre. 2022 tax bill right now is 26.95 on 20 acres.
Now I will have to have the house appraised but it is done as a mobile home.

Glad I moved out of Austin.

I just received an estimate for my property in Ellis County, just outside of Waxahachie. So far I've only been paying property taxes on the land, since the house has been under construction for almost a year. Have 2 acres of land with a small house.

The land value went up 2x from what I had been paying on the vacant lot. However they had never updated the property to the price I paid to begin with, so it was closer to just a 50% value raise.

The house estimated value is pretty damn close to what it cost to build.

All together, the value is just $3K shy of my total mortgage. So I'm fine with how this estimate came out. Decent baseline for the new build.

I'm guessing they must have had their 2022 imagery overflight recently processed, which finally shows my house. For most of 2021, the build was stuck at being a slab due to material shortages.

I'm just glad most of the school bonds got defeated. Now starts the punishment phase from the fine folks we hired to run our schools.

Mine went up a lot.  I will be disputing it in person.

There is a state law which caps property taxes at 10% per year.  The tax addicted liberal cites are getting around that by over-inflating the property values.

Property taxes in Texas will buy you a house in Oklahoma