Gathering Evidence
Learn the essential steps for a successful protest, including gathering evidence, preparing your argument, and presenting it effectively to lower your tax bill.
You can find information about your property on-line. All Texas appraisal districts have websites with search capabilities, and some are quite advanced. You can usually search by address or owner's name, and use more advanced searches for all properties on your street, or in your neighborhood. Once you have located your property, just click on the property ID to open your property details. You can easily find the tax assessment (value) of your home, as well as exemptions that are applied. This information also provides the size of your home, lot size, legal description, construction details, and the appropriate taxing authorities for your property. Often you can find deed history on previous sales, tax rates, and related maps showing your property's boundaries and orientation. Look this information over carefully... is it accurate in all respects?
What else can be found on-line? It is easy to find property listings in your neighborhood, although closed sales information is usually withheld. Listings often provide an "upper" limit of value for similar homes since sellers can ask for whatever they wish. Listing agents often provide sound advice about listing a home well above the "market value" since they realize an over-priced home does not show or sell easily. Current listings in your neighborhood will, at least, give you a reasonable idea about the market value of your home... and how it compares with the tax assessment? If your assessment seems way out of line with market value, you may want to find out more... or find out why.
The most important step for a successful protest is having good sales data. So what is good sales data? Data that can be verified, with sources disclosed. Sales data is the result of market activity, and "arms-length" market data reflects the actions of buyers and sellers, each acting in their own best interests and making decisions without undue influence from outside factors such as financing, Your property compares best with others that surround it, so the best sale would be the property next door that's just like yours that closed yesterday for a cash price. If you have a new neighbor located next door, you could of course just ask what they paid. Sales information that can be verified might come from many sources. In fact, in a tax protest the tax office itself will provide the sales they used to make their assessment.
What other evidence is useful in determining the value of your property? Location is one factor that makes your property unique. Busy street or quiet cul-de-sac? Top of the hill or down in a valley? Proximity to railroads, highways, pipelines, power transmission lines, commercial properties are "environmental" considerations that can affect the value of your property. Factors that affect your individual property might be physical factors such as condition, construction, or age of equipment and components or functional inadequacies such as poor room arrangement, lack of adequate facilities, or even governmental or homeowner association requirements or restrictions that affect a potential buyer's interest in your property.
Evidence is almost anything that you can argue has an effect on the value of your property. Be reasonable... airplanes flying over have little effect on value, unless you're located on the approach or departure path. Take pictures, show the problem, demonstrate the effect and show how the value is affected. Evidence is the key to a successful tax protest, and testimony just explains the evidence.
