HCAD/ TravisCad Property Tax Protest Day
It’s June 15th, and you’re tired. You just spent all night reviewing your final notes for your appraisal hearing this morning. You’ve spent hours researching your neighbor’s properties and taking pictures of anything wrong with the neighborhood, like that dog that runs around without a leash all day, or the home with that one broken window that really hurts the appeal of your neighborhood. You’ve done your best to try to find the sale prices of homes in your neighborhood from the past year, but that information is very difficult to come by. Your hearing date is here, and you find yourself wondering if you have enough evidence this time, after all, you’ve just spent several hours preparing for this and you don’t want that time to go to waste!
You show up to the Central Appraisal District with your questionable evidence in hand. “I wonder if my appraiser is in a good mood, you ask yourself”. You see many other people around you while you wait for your name to be called. They all look nervous, they ask themselves the same question you ask yourself, “do I have enough this time?” You see many others in the room. They look a bit different. They have briefcases and boxes. You realize these are agents hired by other property owners as mercenaries. You ask yourself if you should just hire someone to do this for you, not knowing if they’ll give your property a second thought, or if they’d spend more than 5 minutes gathering evidence for your home. You know they’ll either charge you a high flat rate fee of $150.00+ not to be returned to you, or they’ll charge anywhere from 35-50% of the tax savings you receive. That kind of sounds attractive to you, until you realize you remember once again you’re just another client, and 5 minutes of their time, if you’re lucky.
It’s go time! Your name was just called, “let’s do this” you exclaim to yourself. You meet with your appraiser and show him pictures, you show him the value of a few homes on your block, and maybe you were able to get your hands on one sale that helps you. You present all of your evidence to him and it’s over. You lost again, and losing sucks, especially when you’ve spent all of those hours trying to find the proof the appraisal district needs to see to justify a lower value. As you’re walking out you hear a yell in celebration, it’s just another person caught up in the moment of receiving a reduction. He won, you lost. Deal with it.
As you walk to your car you’re determined to either quit, hire someone else, or figure out how you can win by doing it yourself. You decide to turn around and locate the person who was celebrating. You find him and ask him “how do you do it?” He simply tells you, “Jubally does it, you don’t. For a small fee Jubally runs processes that identify not only properties with the county in your neighborhood that prove your value is too high according to their own data, but they also run searches on recent sales in your neighborhood that can possibly show your home value is too high. They let you choose which comparable properties to use, and then they give you the reports as proof to use for your hearings. If you don’t get your market value lowered, they refund you in full. Even better, if you refer a neighbor or friend to them, they’ll give you 10% off when you use them next year. So here’s my name and number, let them know I sent you. I want my 10% off.”
Hmmm. That simple, huh? Sounds a lot better than spending hours doing this junk myself!