All the data here is publicly available from traviscad.org.
Every year, the residents of my condo building are given the option to have their property tax appraisals protested by MegaProtest*. The cost to the homeowner is nil if the protest does not save the homeowner any money, and is 20% of the year’s tax savings if the protest is successful. I’ve used the service in prior years with mixed results.
This year I decided to try to protest my taxes on my own. I did this for a few reasons:
- I was curious how the protest process worked.
- I thought I could do at least as well as MegaProtest.
- Even if I couldn’t do as well as MegaProtest, I wouldn’t have to pay them.
The first point is self-evident; I am, after all, writing this post. I suspected the second point would be true based on the fact that they have a huge, largely disengaged client base; they don’t always succeed and, therefore, are not always paid; and when they do succeed, their cut is often quite small. The third point served to reinforce the second point, since I only had to do 80% as well as MegaProtest to make up for not paying their normal 20% fee.
The Protest (4/2017)
I began with an initial appraisal of $429,336. After protesting the valuation through the county website, I was offered a settlement of $403,500: a reduction of nearly $26,000, or about 6%. I would estimate that the process took no more than 3 hours of work. Though part of the benefit was lost due to my taking the homestead exemption, this would have worked out to a savings of about $568 in taxes; or, about $189/hr.
I downloaded the publicly-available appraisals shortly after reaching my settlement and compared all units in my building in the same stack. These are condo units that all have the exact same floorplan and face west; in other words, they are as comparable as condos could possibly be without violating the Pauli Exclusion Principle. The values are shown here. My unit on floor 27 is the V’s nadir.
There are a few interesting things to note here:
- For floors 10-12, the county couldn’t care less which floor you’re on.
- For each floor from 13-41, the county assesses a per-floor premium of $2,240.
- Floor 42 gets an extra-special $4,480 premium beyond floor 41, presumably because it’s extra-special.
- Floor 17 has special amenities and higher ceilings, but that’s not reflected in the initial county appraisal at all.
I was pretty happy with the results of my protest but it was too early to declare victory.
The Update (7/2017)
I downloaded new data in July, 2017 and plotted again.
The upshot:
In the *08 stack, six units successfully protested for a valuation decrease of ~$8.9k (2.3%), ~$25.1k (5.9%), ~$25.8k (6.0% — this is me), ~$24.9k (5.6%), ~$50.2k (11.0%), and ~$31.7k (6.9%). The 11% decrease (3108) and the 6.9% decrease (4108) both sold in 2016 for the values at which they are now appraised, which explains their devaluations. Ignoring those, my protest did as well as or better than all other 08-stack unit protests.
The Conclusion
What did we learn?
- I probably achieved a reduction at least as large as what MegaProtest would have achieved, and saved myself 20% of the ensuing tax benefit.
- Lots of people in my condo building could save money by protesting their property values. But they don’t, because they don’t check their email, their time is worth more than $189/hr, or they are not rational actors with perfect information.
- It’s really sad that our property taxes are set up so that if you know you can protest and can navigate a confusing website you can easily pay less with almost no effort. Also, if you live near a bunch of other well-off people, companies will just come offer to do the work for you.
Thanks for reading.
*name changed to protect the innocent
