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Protest your Property Taxes

DON’T YOU LOVE YOUR TAXES GOING UP YEAR AFTER YEAR?

It’s not too late to protest your property taxes, but act fast! The filing deadline to protest is May 15th. Origen Realty is helping homeowners by providing free comparable sales data to aid your protest. To obtain the data just send us an email to info(at)origenrealty(dotted)com and include your property address.

It is your right as a tax payer to protest your property taxes every year, and you absolutely should. The process is not as daunting a task as some might think, and most appraisal districts even have an option to file the protest online (see links below). There are many different grounds for protest and they include:

*Inaccurate appraised value of your property –  The appraisal district estimates a market value of your home that is used to calculate taxes due. Because this value is only an estimate, it’s absolutely possible for the appraisal district to get this value wrong. You can provide the appraisal district with information on the sales of properties that are similar to yours for consideration in lowering your taxable value.

*Incorrect property information –  It is difficult to maintain correct data for every property in the county. Review the property information that the appraisal district is using to value your property and  verify that their records include the correct lot size, square footage, year built, improvements to the property, etc. Errors in these records are a sound basis for a protest.

*Deferred Maintenance–  The appraisal district doesn’t know the precise condition of your home and must use assumptions to determine your home’s value. Certain factors such as rotten wood, roof leaks, foundation problems, and other major issues are likely valid reasons for an appraisal district to decrease the taxable value of your home. You should take pictures of any deferred maintenance and obtain repair quotes to submit along with your property tax protest.

*Uniform and Unequal Appraisal –  To protest on the basis of uniform and unequal appraisals, find properties that are similar to yours and who have been assessed a lower value, and request that your value be adjusted to those of the comparable properties.

*Taxable value increased by more than 10%: For homeowners with a homestead exemption, there is a 10% cap on an annual increase of your home’s taxable appraised value. You can check your appraisal district’s website to see what the appraised value of your home was in 2017 and compare that to the 2018 value to ensure that it didn’t increase by more than 10%.

Links to Online Protests:

Chambers County: http://chamberscad.org/(S(fxrt4fj3aoxfp525iu1efhna))/onlineprotest.aspx?clientid=chamberscad

Harris Countyhttp://hcad.org/hcad-online-services/ifile-protest/

Brazoria County: http://efile.brazoriacad.org/

Galveston County: http://portal.galvestoncad.org/

Fort Bend County: https://webappeals.fbcad.org/Appraisal/PublicAccess/OnlineAppeals/User/Login?ReturnUrl=%2fAppraisal%2fPublicAccess%2fOnlineAppeals

Montgomery County: http://mcad-tx.org/OnlineAppeals/User/Login?ReturnUrl=%2fOnlineAppeals

Liberty County: https://eprotest.libertycad.com/

Waller County: https://portal.trueautomation.com/18

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