PART 2: Why Are my Property Taxes Increasing?

So your property taxes might be increasing and you’re not sure why. PART 2

So if you’re crying about your market value that your local appraisal district just sent you in the mail, this is April in the state of Texas, the first thing that you need to do is you need to understand how they came up with that number.
So how are you going to do that?

Walk right on into the appraisal district or log into your online portal and you’re going to look for a property record card or like the detailed sheet. You want to see details of how they came up with those values as this whole video is gonna be about checking for errors. I would be surprised how sometimes you have errors on your property record card that could decrease your property taxes very quickly.

You’re checking your homes square footage. So the improvements square footage, living square footage is gonna be your air conditioned space in a home. Same thing with regular real estate. You’re gonna be looking for the square footage. Of any improvements like detached barns, workshops, if you have an old building on your property that you have since torn down and it’s showing up on your tax record that you need to have that removed for how many bedrooms, bathrooms, do they have a pool on there? And you don’t have a pool? Any records that are incorrect, like they’re listing that you had some permits or some remodels done and you didn’t have those done, Square footage of the lot for the acreage of the lot, is it correct? And most importantly, you want to be checking the year that that improvement was built.

If you’re telling me, ‘Corey, I’m looking on it and I see that it has the year it was built was 1980, but it says that there’s an effective age. What does that mean?’

Your home was built in 1980 and it has an effective age of 2020. It means that they’re saying that you’ve done enough improvements and updates to that property to bring it to a 2020 level, meaning it’s kind of comparable to a home that was built in 2020 or an improvement that was built in 2020.

Now all of these details, they just feed into the valuation. So if you have wrong facts, it’s gonna equal wrong value. There are a lot of times that they are incorrect on your on your square footage of the improvements and it could work in your favor or against you. If you feel so inclined. Go out there with your tape measure and bust out a little geometry to make sure that they have your square footage correct before you start arguing about comps. This person sold for this, that and the other. Start here. Go check for errors. You might find a problem that has absolutely nothing to do with comparable sales and what your neighbor sold their property for.

And I want to finish this by saying that these videos are not to be bashing the appraisal district. I’ve had some really fantastic interactions with them. They’ve been very, very helpful to my husband and I any of answered a lot of things for me for clients and properties. So going in and talking to them and getting down to the facts. Don’t just go in there to go in there to complain. Get your facts and get them right so you know which direction to go.