This will be the second time I have had to battle with that freaking den of thieves. Arbitrarily bumped the appraisal of my home by 10% this year. CUZ, that's why. Anyway, had to fight with them once 5 or 6 years ago, and they lowered their stupid appraisal, and got it right. But it was a huge pain in the butt. Now they mail their latest appraisal and include a 'How to Protest This Appraisal' form and doc in the same envelope. It's like living in Crazy World. Anyway, before I go to the trouble of filing a protest online, or filling out this form and mailing it in, I was wondering if any of you have had to deal with this, and if there is any downside to just filling it out online and doing it that way, instead of going there in person to fight it.. You know, as an aside, I would not shed a tear if, next time a hurricane decides to stroll through town, it should happen to totally annihilate that dung-heap of a building the HCAD uses..
I purchased my house last year. They appraised it at 15K over my purchase price. I filed an online protest and stated that I bought the house within the last 12 months for X price. They adjusted my appraisal to that price within a month. Easy.
No, you're exactly right, it's just the fact that it seems to be accepted that the appraisal district is incapable of getting an appraisal right, it is accepted as a matter of course that they will always attempt to rip you off, and rather than address THAT (the core of the problem), the Legislature has to step in and REQUIRE them to send detailed instructions on how to fight them, in the very same envelope with the carjacking itself. That's what I am talking about. Kind of like the cops requiring muggers to hand out free mace with every mugging.
Home prices are really on the rise right now in the Houston and surrounding areas, it's not surprising HCAD is trying to increase the values the max 10%. That's not to say I like it!!
Go ahead and protest online. You're not giving up the right to fight them in person if they don't agree to your online protest. And don't expect them to do it either. I protested last year online and, as expected, they stayed firm on their numbers. That's HCAD's decision to make. Then when I came in person to fight it, they use a panel of 3 non-HCAD, supposedly impartial people. The HCAD person is there to fight it and they argue their case. Her evidence was a bunch of comps from other neighborhoods etc, with houses ranging from all different sizes and styles. My comp was my neighbors house, which is the exact same size, style, lot size, view, direction facing, etc. And HCAD themselves gave his house a valuation $125k less than mine. With that evidence presented they couldn't help but let me win.
Please. They're collecting taxes to pay for services that improve your life. It is nothing at all like a mugging. And they've put the protest form in the appraisal mailing for at least as long as I've owned a house -- 10 years. That's fair and right to provide the taxpayer a mechanism to challenge the valuation. They have not raised my valuation ever since it dropped with the recession. But, the first year living there, I did have to challenge. The initial reviewer said I should go straight to the panel because of the circumstances -- newly bought, but not an arm's length deal, and inaccurate data. I kicked butt in the review panel and they were asking me afterward if I was a lawyer or something. I guess I overdid it on the argument. They didn't have an online option back then but I imagine it's the web version of the initial review. I don't see why you wouldn't give it a shot and see what they'd give you without having to go in and present an argument.
Just refinanced my house over Christmas and my house appraised for $20k higher than what we paid for it. Got my tax paperwork and they only raised the value of the house about $2k over last year. I'm going to lay low.
Actually, I figured out what they did, and have already sent in the online protest form. My attitude is colored by my dealings with them in the past. Brief history: about 6 years ago, we suddenly received a massive increase in the appraisal of our house. The house is a typical floor plan in a developed subdivision, all the floor plans are readily available from the builder, and the square footages are readily available, and as the houses were all built within approximately a three year span, the very few variations on the floor plans means that both the square footages and valuations of these homes are very similar, and always have been and always will be. And that's fine. But that didn't stop HCAD from appraising the house at about 45k higher than even the largest, most expensive house in the development. Why did they do this? Laziness, incompetence, apathy, who knows. The appraiser simply measured the perimeter of the foundation and multiplied by 2 to get the square footage. But my house is only a partial 2-story house on the inside, meaning the living space square footage was roughly 1,000 square feet less than the appraisal. So, through no fault of my own, I was forced to do the research for comps, take photographs of numerous houses in the development, generate reports and printouts, just to be able to show to them what they should have already known, had they done even a minimally professional job. All the responsibility was on me. And if I had not, then I would have had to a couple hundred dollars a month extra in taxes, which they were not entitled to. So, they screw up, and it's my responsibility to fix it. Then, when the time came for the initial review, I went to this cubicle hell and finally spoke to a person whose only characteristic seemed to be that she had decided that I was lying, no matter what I showed her. Eventually the message got through that the error was on their part, and they fixed it. Now I am a calm, reasonable person, and I found the entire odyssey infuriating. And then it was all settled at the same amount each year, until this year, when some appraiser has done the EXACT SAME THING. The square footage is over 1,000 SF too high on the appraisal, yet again. Not only that, when doing the math on the increase over last year, it is *EXACTLY* 10%, I mean to the dollar. It was a flat 10% increase. Now I don't know about you, but to me, the odds of an appraisal just coincidentally increasing the value of a home by EXACTLY ten percent are not high. This did not look like an appraisal at all, rather just an arbitrary strong-arm tax increase without any warning or seeming accountability. Damn straight it feels like a mugging, dealing with that bunch. Now you are right, the country provides services. And notice, I didn't say I don't want to pay my taxes. What angers me is that this outfit is so soulless and brain-dead that it has institutionalized incompetence, to the point where the state lawmakers had to insist on an entire system of protests, due to the constant public outrage and outcry. What is infuriating is that when they screw up, I am the one who has to jump through hoops to make it right. Now I'm glad you had good luck with yours, as I eventually did. It's a shame yo had to do it in the first place though. And I am hoping this one protest will be enough, and they will just fix their mistake. Strangely, I am not holding my breath.
Actually 10% is the max annual increase, so they are likely saying it went up over 10% but that's the max tax increase for a year.
HCAD did the same thing last year in my area; most of the properties in the Rice Military/Heights area saw increases in property value. So of course, the management company of the apartment complex I live jacked rent up by 10%, in lockstep. If you ask me (go ahead), some of the suburban Houston real estate seems fairly priced but some of the properties inside the loop are outrageous. Construction activity picked up this past winter for the 2013 spring/summer real estate market - particularly apartment complexes. Just give it time, when oil prices drop, companies will start laying-off workers and reduce their hiring, and then real estate prices will come back down.
And what will HCAD do when the prices go down? Will they drop the valuation? No... they will graciously just not raise it.
I was recently in that boat. Sold a house last July...hoped for high appraisal. Now in my new house...hoped for low appraisal. Neither of which happened.
Well, I can't disagree about the institutionalized incompetence, but that comes with the sort of natural monopoly government institutions necessarily enjoy. There aren't competitors, so there isn't much pressure to improve or even perform. I take it for granted that a mechanism of contesting is necessary to enforce quality, which means extracting some work from the 'customers.' The same happens with income taxes, where you have to do work to report what you owe (which I'm betting you don't appreciate either), or in the courts when you have to defend yourself against lawsuits or criminal charges. It's just how government operates. The alternative of them just getting it right without any real incentive to do the work isn't going to happen. So, I'm glad they have a mechanism in place for accountablility. But, I believe HCAD reports a market value and a tax appraisal value. That the market value would increase by the cap on the tax appraisal value is rather suspicious. When the recession hit, it hit my neighborhood particularly hard, and HCAD reduced the appraisal on my house significantly without my having to do anything. I was chomping the bit to protest my valuation and save on taxes only to get a number from them that was even disappointingly low.
