Travis County Property Tax Question

[Account Closed]

Hi everyone - have a property tax question for you. Doing my first protest this year and had a strange experience at informal hearing this morning.

Sales comps provided by the county (which I requested) clearly suggest that my house is overvalued by close to 100k (I'm in a mid-200k neighborhood) - I can explain why if helpful but that's essentially the situation. The problem is the guy I spoke with at the informal hearing this morning said that the county "did not profile my neighborhood this year" and thus he can't take sales comps into consideration - only equity comps. The equity comps also show highly inflated adjustments, but then to that he said "there is nothing on the computer I can edit for equity". He then told me that if I go to the formal hearing with ARB, they will tell me the same thing. None of this makes sense to me, given that the TCAD site states things such as "The evidence presented for an over-market valuation protest may be sale prices of comparable properties in the area...." and, in regards to ARB hearing, "In value and unequal appraisal protests, the chief appraiser has the burden of proving the property’s value by a preponderance of the evidence presented at the ARB hearing. 344 If the chief appraiser fails to meet this burden of proof, the ARB must decide in the property owner’s favor. 345"

So basically this morning I was given no reason for why my property was valued so high - the guy even told me he agreed the property value was too high but there was nothing he could do and I would be told the same at the ARB hearing - he even got up to go ask someone else. I don't think he has worked there long, is he just wrong? Or am I missing something here? His response for why he could not change anything today was "there is nothing to change in the computer for your property" and he could not consider sales comps again due to "the county did not profile your neighborhood this year" - that does not seem like evidence to me, and regardless of what the county did this year sales comps are quite relevant to my property's value. He said the only thing I can submit for evidence this year is repairs - again maybe I am missing something but I don't understand how that would be the case. For quick reference, two of the five sales comps had a 200k positive adjustment for extra square footage alone, when the sales data shows the highest adjustment I think I could hope for is 40k, were I trying to sell - again this is a mid-200k neighborhood.

Has anyone run into this? I did a lot of research and never saw anyone mention something like this. Thanks in advance.

edit: by the way I'll be going to ARB hearing, but wondering if I need to adjust my strategy or something

[Stephen Stokes]

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