I just received a letter from the Travis County Appraisal District with regard to my upcoming property tax protest hearing. Instead of having the hearing, they want to just offer a lower value now, by mail. If I agree, I can just sign the letter and mail it back. The value will be lowered and I won’t have to attend a hearing for this particular property (though I still have several other over-valued properties awaiting hearings).
The original appraised value for this property, which is a rental house we own in SW Austin, was $196,772. TCAD is offering to drop it to $172,236, which is a value I can live with. In fact, I wasn’t expecting to do that well at the hearing, so I guess I’ll sign the letter and send it back.
Here’s what the letter says. It starts off with:
“Based on an analysis of sales data the indicated value of your property is $172,236”
Translation: “We did a very poor analysis the first time. Because we’ve been deluged with property tax protest requests this year, we decided to do a proper analysis and would now like to set your appraised value at the correct amount instead of incompetently and unfairly over-assessing your value”.
The letter goes on to say:
If you agree with our analysis, we can serve you better by helping you avoid a trip to our offices. If you agree, please sign and date the enclosed Settlement and Waiver of Protest form, and return it to the district using the postage paid envelope…
I’m mailing mine in back in. The county is smart to take this approach, which we are seeing for the first time ever. It’s not that hard to get the assessed value closer than a 15% error, especially in neighborhoods such as the one in which this subject property is located, which are mostly homogeneous, similar homes of similar age and size.
But this raises the question as to how the “analysis” performed by TCAD could been about 15% too high in the first round. Is this an admission that they don’t really try that hard to get the number right in the first place? Well, we already know that they don’t. But I know how to fix that, if I have my way during the next legislative session.