All Forum Posts by: Elisa Pinigis

I'm looking for leads to developers who would be interested in converting a single family property to multi family once rezoning passes.

@Alex G. The district used a combination of cost and market value. Our commercial warehouse LI property was assessed at $199/sq. ft.

The appraisal on our commercial property increased by $500k/58% in one year with no improvements on the property and in the neighborhood. Our tax protest firm failed to appear at our informal and formal hearings. We obtained an independent certified appraisal. We represented ourselves at arbitration because hiring an attorney was not cost-effective. The arbitration outcome was agreement on a valuation higher than the previous year but aligned with comps.

We got through our property tax arbitration on our commercial property yesterday. I am glad to share tips with anyone anticipating the same.

@Jim Cummings Thank you for this explanation.

@Jim Cummings

You are the first person to mention a range of value. It makes sense that such a measure exists. Otherwise there doesn't seem to be a point in getting a certified appraisal. If you have any reference to range of value, I would appreciate it. The property is commercial, LI-CO, and with warehouse structures.

I got a response from the arbitrator regarding the illegible rebuttal evidence from TCAD. I can't tell whether it is to our advantage. However, bringing the issue to the arbitrator was the right thing to do.

"The time lines cannot be changed because you want TCAD to present a better quality or explanations of their evidence. They do not get a second chance to improve their evidence and their evidence stands as submitted. You need to do the best you can with what they submitted."

@Jim Cummings Thanks for this idea. I will ask our appraiser to recalculate based on recency. BTW It seems like the Texas certified appraisal has very little weight with the Travis County Appraisal District. The TCAD appraiser stated that appraisals will have a range which makes sense given the variables. However, $400k seems like a huge range. I was unable to find an acceptable "tolerance" percentage for appraisals online.

Elisa

We hired a Texas certified appraiser to get an independent assessment of our property valuation. The resulting appraisal is approximately $400k below TCAD's appraisal. Upon reviewing this independent appraisal, TCAD changed its appraisal of our property from $156/sq. ft. to $218/sq. ft. It used the same 2018 comps as its original appraisal but added this 39% adjustment to our property without explanation other than the adjustment reflects equity value. And as described above - the numbers resulting in this 39% adjustment are illegible. We have asked for a legible copy of the data and an explanation. Any further suggestions are welcome.

The appraisal district increased our property by approximately $500k / 58% in 2018 without any corresponding changes to the property or neighborhood. Our protest firm failed to attend the informal and formal hearings. We are heading to arbitration on our own because it isn't cost effective to hire an attorney. We submitted evidence that would reduce our appraisal. The appraisal district responded by adding some factor to its original 2018 comps that brought the cost per sq. ft. from $156/sq. ft. to $217.89 / sq. ft. The revised figures are illegible and not accompanied by an explanation. Do we have any recourse?