We all want our houses to be worth the money, we just don’t want to overpay taxes on them. I got that lovely yellow envelope in the mail recently and YIKES! I received a $40,000 appraisal increase in two years? Stop the madness!
Reduce Your Property Taxes
Here are some tips to help reduce those pesky property appraisals and lower your property taxes!
- If your value has jumped and you don’t think that it should, bring evidence of why your home may not be worth top dollar. Bring photos of maintenance items that need attention, kitchen or bathrooms that need to be updated or contractor costs on those updates to show how much it would cost to bring your home up to the current selling standard in the current marketplace.
- If you feel the property is being overvalued, ask a realtor to run a property analysis and use this as evidence at a hearing.
- Time is of the essence. In Texas, you have until May 31st to file your protest, so you better jump on it! You’ll be set up for an informal hearing and then perhaps a formal hearing.
- Often, if you send back a dispute, you may get a counter appraisal from the tax office which should be more in line as they run another in-depth analysis. (This is what happened for me so I didn’t have to go to a hearing)
- Good LUCK!
