Who are we? We are Jubally, a self help service to provide the information you need to protest your property taxes. We want to be your ally in saving money.
You are purchasing 7-18 pages worth of data and charts that you would then present at your hearing. We call this your Evidence Packet, or your Property Tax Protest Report. This is your armor. This is the information that you would have to research yourself if you had the time, we are simply trying to make it easy on you and provide this information to you. View an example of this evidence by clicking here.
We’re not going to reveal our master plan to take over the universe, but we will let you know that Travis county will begin being served in late April of 2016. At that time, we’ll help you with your Austin Property Tax Protest and Appeals.
Property Tax Values (Notice of Values) are sent out by the appraisal district in April, typically. This is when we receive our values, too. So each year April is when that year’s current values will be updated in our system.
The answer lies in common sense. As your neighbors have their property value’s protested successfully, their values lower. When their values lower, then this allows us to possibly use their property as a comp, or if we’re already using it, it helps us lower yours even more. You can purchase now and still be able to get up to the minute data through a property report refresh in your account, so it does not matter when your hearing is. This is a great feature that nobody else has. Take advantage of it.
You decide, we don’t want to tell you. Our data and formulas are exact replicas of Harris County Appraisal District’s (HCAD) – nobody else can say that. The evidence is strong, and we provide instructions, tips, protest forms, cover sheets, charts, maps, and laws that are on your side. What we give you is a complete package of solid proof. Is it the best? You tell us. We think we know the answer. HCAD knows it, too — as seen by our 97% success rate in 2013. Oh, we guess we’ll spoil it. Yes, we are the best property tax consultant.
If you do not get your value lowered, then we will buy back, at full price, the amount we’ve charged you for that specific report, with the stipulation that you attended your hearing/s and presented the evidence we’ve provided for you.
We would be glad to refer you to a property tax agent who can attend your hearing for you in the event that you are unable to. You should be able to work out an arrangement with the appraisal district to mail, fax, or email your evidence in as well.
Yes and no. You do have access to the County’s appraisal records. You most likely do not have direct access to recent sales in your neighborhood. You can gain access through a realtor, though. Our system differs from others in that we look at every County record in your neighborhood, and we also look at all the sales in your neighborhood in order to find the very best comparable properties to help you make your case.
We will be glad to work with you if you choose to be a referral partner with us. Please give us a shout if this is something you are interested in.
We use a method called Uniform and Equal (Equity or U&E) and a method called Comparable Market Analysis (CMA). The Uniform and Equal method utilizes County appraisal records to “equalize” the value of your home with other similar properties within your neighborhood. The Comparable Market Analysis utilizes recent and comparable sales in your neighborhood in order to determine the actual market value of your home. We use the HCAD CAMA model for all adjustments, and we do everything we can to make sure all comps are within the same grade letter as the subject.
Yes, you can. Once you type in your account number, or your property address, we will return our suggested value to you. This can be based on unequal appraisal using official County data, based on a comparable market analysis featuring confidential sales data, or both.
We will tell you how strong your case is based on how many adjustment dollars we’ve made to comparable properties and how many comparable properties there are to your home that help reduce your home’s assessed value.
We use several complex algorithms that adjust comparable County-valued properties or comparable sales of properties up or down in order to accurately calculate the price per square foot of your improvements. We then take the median of the U&E comparable properties, or the average of the comparable sale, add back in the land value and the extra features value of your home. The adjustments we make are the same as the adjustments HCAD uses in their analysis.
Our evidence package doesn’t only give you the comps you need, we also give you instructions, tips, laws, and even debate topics. It is so good, we had a 97% success rate in 2013. Most professionals fall well below 70%. The appraisal district would much rather work with you, trust us on that. We’ll show you exactly how to protest your property taxes.
A common question we receive is if I cannot save money this year, why should I protest? Appraisal Districts set the Market Value, and your exemptions are applied to it and results in your Appraised Value. You protest your Market Value with the goal to get it equal to or below the Appraised Value. If you are able to get it below the Appraised Value, the Market Value becomes your new Appraised Value as well. Even if there is a large spread between these two values, you need to protest. As long as there is at least a 10% gap, it is almost guaranteed that your Appraised Value will go up 10% each year. The quicker you can equalize these two values, the quicker you can begin saving a lot of money. Imagine how you’d feel if you didn’t protest, and next year your Market Value didn’t go up? You’d be happy, until you realize that your Appraised Value did increase up to 10% just because it had to play catch-up with the Market Value. You had your chance to get the Market Value lower, but you didn’t, and now you get another increase on your taxable value. Protest it every year, it will payoff greatly in the future.
This year (2016) HCAD is applying time adjustments to your sales comps. A time adjustment in this case takes the sales price of your sales comps you are using to justify a reduction, and adding 1-2% to the price for each month from the sales date until December of that year. If you don’t have time adjustments included, they are not even considering the evidence at informal hearings. Do they do the same thing in a down market and throw out your evidence if you don’t have time adjustments? Of course not! Do you think a real estate appraiser could get away with adjusting a comp sale 1-2% per month from the sale date until the day he/she appraises a home? Heck no they couldn’t. Why can appraisal districts? Well, they shouldn’t, at least not that great of an increase. I’d gladly purchase a property if I could get a 6-12% return in 6 months, wouldn’t you? Ridiculous.
Many of you purchased your home this year, and appraisal districts will argue that the sales price of your home is what your home value should be. If your value is lower than what you purchased for, do not disclose your sales price. By law, you are to be valued equally to other similar homes in your neighborhood after proper adjustments are made. If your home was purchased this year, then you will most likely be arguing Uniform and Equal. Since they will claim the sales price is what the value should be, you need to tell them that you are to be valued based on Uniform and Equal and use the value we calculate for that argument. The law that speaks about this is on the last page of our evidence package, and also below.
By law, Uniform and Equal (U&E) can be used according to Section 41.43 of the Texas Property Tax Code.
http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/Docs/TX/htm/TX.41.htm
Protest of Determination of Value or Inequality of Appraisal (b) A protest on the ground of unequal appraisal of property shall be determined
in favor of the protesting party unless the appraisal district establishes that: (3) the appraised value of the property is equal to or less than the
median appraised value of a reasonable number of comparable properties appropriately adjusted.
Did you know appraisal districts are graded by the state comptroller based on changes made at informal hearings? The more changes they make informally, the worse their grade is from the comptroller. Is it any wonder they want to send so many protests to the ARB? At the ARB, the decisions to reduce value fall on the board’s shoulders, not on the appraisal district. Changes the way you look at the informal hearings, huh?
The amount you pay in taxes varies in each jurisdiction. A tax rate is assigned to your jurisdiction, and the value of your home with the County is multiplied by that tax rate to determine how many dollars in property taxes you owe. When you lower the value the County has assessed your home at, you lower the amount of property taxes you owe.
When you successfully reduce your home’s value assessed with the County, you reduce how much money in property taxes you pay for that year. When you lower this value one year, then it starts lower the following year, even if they raise it. If you were able to reduce your home’s value by $10,000 one year, then realistically it starts $10,000 lower than it could have the following year. The money you save year to year is compounded over time, naturally.
If your neighborhood protests their values as well, then this helps equalize assessed values in your neighborhood. When values are equalized, then HCAD has a difficult time finding comparable properties in your neighborhood to justify an increase on the homes in that neighborhood.
HCAD’s iSettle is not a true interactive system. Have you ever tried arguing with a computer? That is what you’re doing with HCAD.org‘s iSettle system. When you use iSettle, you’re submitting a value to a computer (it does not even look at your evidence), and the computer decides whether to accept, reject, or counter your opinion of value. Using iSettle removes 50% of your negotiation power as it takes the place of your informal hearing. If you do not come to an agreement using iSettle, your next and last opportunity to present your case is at the Formal Hearing with the Appraisal Review Board.
Sorry, but no. We’ve set out to empower you to be able to lower your value with the County. You have a vested interest in your property and your argument, with passion and our data, will justify your request. No one will ever be able to represent you like you can represent your own interests.
If you cannot attend your hearing, you are allowed to file one extension. This will allow your hearing to be rescheduled. If you cannot attend that hearing, then the value of your home with HCAD remains until the next tax year.
By law, Uniform and Equal (U&E) can be used according to Section 41.43 of the Texas Property Tax Code. http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/Docs/TX/htm/TX.41.htm
By law, Comparable Market Analysis (CMA) can be used according to Section 41.43 of the Texas Property Tax Code. http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/Docs/TX/htm/TX.41.htm
Foreclosures and any other sale are allowed under Sec 23.01(c) (1) of the Texas Property Tax Code.
http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/Docs/TX/htm/TX.23.htm
Section 7.2 of the International Association of Assessing Officers (IAAO) Standard on Sales Verification allows for certain conditions to be accounted for in order calculate out the realized sales price of a property.
http://www.window.state.tx.us/taxinfo/proptax/pdf/iaao.pdf
Sales should be adjusted to represent only the value of the real property as of the assessment date prior to model calibration and ratio studies. Adjustments to the sale price may be considered if any of the following exist:
The typical protest deadline is May 31st or 30 days after you’ve received your Notice of Value, whichever is later. Your hearing will be later, but you must reserve your right to attend that hearing by protesting before May 31st. Just send in your protest form, you can decide later if you really want to go and save money. (We think you do)
The amount you pay in taxes varies in each jurisdiction. A tax rate is assigned to your jurisdiction, and the value of your home with the County is multiplied by that tax rate to determine how many dollars in property taxes you owe. When you lower the value the County has assessed your home at, you lower the amount of property taxes you owe.
When I protest my property taxes hurt my ability to sell at a higher price when I’m ready to sell? Absolutely not. We can explain in detail why the County records are not truly market value, but we’d rather put it to you this way. If you’re looking to purchase a home, would you rather purchase one that is assessed at a low value with the County resulting in lower property taxes, or would you rather purchase one that is assessed at a high value with the County resulting in guaranteed high property taxes? Lowering the assessed value makes your home more attractive when you’re ready to sell – it is that simple.
In the event that our system determines there are not enough comparable properties to lower the value of your home with HCAD, or that your property contains attributes that our system flags as complex, we will recommend a property tax agent for you.
Yes, you can. Once you type in your account number, or your property address, we will return our suggested value to you. This can be based on unequal appraisal using official County data, based on a comparable market analysis featuring confidential sales data, or both.
This depends on how efficient you are. In a recent survey that Jubally Solutions arranged, homeowners who protested their property on their own spent an average of 10 hours of research and were not confident they had compelling data to argue for them. We do it for you in 10 minutes or less, or we tell you that we can’t, and provide you hard documentation that cannot legally be cracked.
When you successfully reduce your home’s value assessed with the County, you reduce how much money in property taxes you pay for that year. When you lower this value one year, then it starts lower the following year, even if they raise it. If you were able to reduce your home’s value by $10,000 one year, then realistically it starts $10,000 lower than it could have the following year. The money you save year to year is compounded over time, naturally.
If your neighborhood protests their values as well, then this helps equalize assessed values in your neighborhood. When values are equalized, then HCAD has a difficult time finding comparable properties in your neighborhood to justify an increase on the homes in that neighborhood.
When I protest my property taxes hurt my ability to sell at a higher price when I’m ready to sell? Absolutely not. We can explain in detail why the County records are not truly market value, but we’d rather put it to you this way. If you’re looking to purchase a home, would you rather purchase one that is assessed at a low value with the County resulting in lower property taxes, or would you rather purchase one that is assessed at a high value with the County resulting in guaranteed high property taxes? Lowering the assessed value makes your home more attractive when you’re ready to sell – it is that simple.
Harris County homeowners who are frustrated with paying too high of property taxes but who lack the confidence to take on the Harris County Appraisal District alone now have a new high-tech ally – Jubally Solutions, a do-it-yourself property tax appeals solution.
The new company has launched its services this week to provide homeowners in Harris County an unprecedented level of factual information that gives them their best chance of successfully appealing the value that HCAD has placed on their homes for 2013. The company’s website of www.jubally.com offers a complete look at the services and the money-back guarantee that is offered
LINK TO QUICK FACTS ABOUT JUBALLY SOLUTIONS
LINK TO HCAD’S “THROW THE DOG A BONE” APPROACH
“Our analysis shows that HCAD overvalues significant percentages of homes in Harris County based upon either actual market value or on the constitutionally protected basis of equity,” Jubally Solutions owner Blake Roberts says. “Unfortunately, HCAD has the historical advantage over property owners because it packages its process and its evidence package in a way that works to HCAD’s advantage rather than the homeowners’ advantage.”
Roberts says that Jubally provides homeowners a service “that levels the information and data playing field” by its high-tech merging of multiple sources of data that allows homeowners to successfully challenge “HCAD’s stranglehold over the protest process.”
“It is well known among those who have confronted the HCAD machine over the years that the central appraisal district has all of the advantages over homeowners who want to represent themselves in the protest process,” Roberts says. “For a flat fee of $69, Jubally gives homeowners the quality of information they need to battle HCAD over their property values.”
Moreover, Roberts says, the company’s service will allow its clients to obtain a “bottom-line analysis of whether the data will support a reduced property value based upon market or equity standards and the strength of the evidence before ever having to pay a single penny.”
Roberts, who has extensive professional experience in information technology in the private sector has used his knowledge in conjunction with experts in the property tax appraisal industry to develop a system that “uses HCAD’s own data to show that HCAD is generally over-appraising residential properties for tax purposes.”
Moreover, Roberts’ professional career includes having served with a property tax consulting firm charged with the duty of preparing evidence packages for the agents who represented clients at informal meetings and formal ARB hearings.
“It was during this phase of my career in the property tax industry that I learned how HCAD develops its evidence packages and the significant flaws in their procedures that so often biases the evidence to impose higher values on homeowners than the data actually supports,” Roberts said.
“I had a great opportunity to consult personally with experienced property tax agents to learn some of their professional approaches,” he said. “With Jubally, I have combined that working knowledge with my extensive technological background to produce a system that should work well for homeowners who want to represent themselves.”
“Our system merges HCAD’s own data with independently available resources to automatically produce both market analysis and equity analysis of the majority of homes in Harris County,” Roberts says. “The system is so sophisticated that a homeowner can have one’s own evidence package within seconds. The evidence package we provide homeowners can be presented to HCAD appraisers or used before an Appraisal Review Board panel.”
“Our company does not represent homeowners at informal meetings or hearings. We have designed our company to give homeowners a reliable, accurate, and easy to understand evidence package that they can use to represent their own interests,” Roberts says.
“In addition to calling upon his own professional background in the property tax industry, Roberts has further consulted with independent property tax professionals who currently are active in the industry to make sure that our work product is of high professional standard,” he added.
“This professional collaboration between technology and property tax practitioners has produced an incredibly user-friendly system that takes the mystery out of the process of determining what a family’s home should be valued at for tax purposes.
“It is important for a homeowner to understand that there is no danger in fighting for lower taxable values,” Roberts says. “Taxable value and the amount of money at which you can actually sell your home are not necessarily the same.”
HCAD uses a mass appraisal process to value over one million homes in Harris County. The system inherently produces significant numbers of mistakes in terms of both market and equity.
“Our state of the art technology is designed to identify HCAD’s mistakes and give you an evidence package that reflects a more reasonable and defensible taxable value for your property,” Roberts says.
A new business launched only about a week ago established to help property owners fight for lower taxes by successfully challenging the Harris County Appraisal District’s assertions of market values on residential property is picking up some startling strong but counter-intuitive allies – property tax agents.
Jubally Solutions founder Blake Roberts says that he was approached by two property tax agents who practice in Harris County and were aware of his company’s extensive data base on property values and sales in Harris County to see if his work product could help their clients.
Both agents, Roberts reports, were able to use Jubally’s evidence packages in informal protest meetings to achieve significant value reductions for their clients. It is important to note that the protest season is barely underway and the formal protest deadline for filing property value protests is not until May 31.
“We are extremely satisfied and gratified that the quality of our work product and market analysis is already earning such a strong reputation for excellence among professionals in the industry,” Roberts said. “Our primary goal is to help homeowners who want to represent themselves to be able to do so effectively.”
However, Roberts added, our bigger objective is to help all homeowner successfully fight HCAD’s valuation system which systemically places too high value on too many residential properties in Harris County.
“It is a testament to the profound effort Jubally has made during its research and development phase that professional appraisers who actually represent homeowners have learned about us so quickly,” Roberts added.
Of the property owners who have used the Jubally data base to get a basic conclusion about the credibility of HCAD’s notice of value on their property, some 95% have seen Jubally’s data package provide its determination of market or equity value to be lower than HCAD’s determination.
One of the agents who actually used a Jubally evidence package in an informal protest meeting did so on very short notice. He was less than an hour from the start of his scheduled meeting; used online access to Jubally’s data base; and within about 10 minutes had downloaded and printed Jubally’s complete evidence package.
He then used that package, Roberts reports, to earn his client a value reduction of some 10% dropping an original valuation of over $323,000 to an agreed valuation of some $290,000.
That is the power of reliable evidence, Roberts says while adding a cautionary note that there are no assertions by the company that every property owner using Jubally will walk out of HCAD with equally stunning results.
“The key to fighting HCAD’s value is to have reliable evidence,” he said. “We are not tax agents. We don’t represent homeowners in hearings,” he noted. “We have made an enormous effort to develop a high sophisticated data base from which we can give homeowners a real fighting chance to be successful in challenging the system.”
Another agent who used the Jubally evidence package for a client earned a significant value reduction for his client. He gained a 7% value reduction in an informal meeting dropping the notice value by HCAD from just over $320,000 to an agreed value of just over $297,000.
Here are some quick facts about Jubally:
What is the mission of Jubally Solutions?
Simple. We will provide you a professional, reliable, and easy to understand evidence package that is designed to help you successfully protest the taxable value of your home as determined by the Harris County Appraisal District in 2013.
What does the service cost?
A homeowner can buy the service for a $69 flat fee. If neighbors or friends want to make a “group purchase” at the same time, the fee for each will be lower.
What happens if I protest using your package and I don’t get any tax reduction?
You get a full refund. To be clear, we cannot guarantee that HCAD’s system will give you the full value reduction our evidence believes is fully justified. However, if you strike out and get nothing, we’ll purchase your report back from you.
Why should I have confidence in your evidence package?
It is a state of the art system developed by experienced information technology specialists who worked hand in hand with property tax specialists to custom designed the production of professionally qualified evidence packages. The information is both detailed and summarized so as to be both thorough and easy to understand.
Where did Jubally get its data?
By law, we were able to obtain data that HCAD used to value homes in 2013. We also gained access to the processes by which HCAD makes value adjustments to so-called comparable properties. In other words, we have the same data that HCAD has.
More importantly we executed contracts with independent sources to gain access to valuable market data some of which HCAD, we believe, does not use appropriately when valuing your home.
The database from which we develop your evidence package is in many ways superior to what HCAD uses to value your individual home.
Do I get to know what you believe the value should be BEFORE I pay your fee?
Yes. At absolutely no cost to you, we will provide you our system’s evaluation of your home’s market value or equity value. Under law, if your notice value is higher than either the market value of your home OR the equity value (fairness compared to comparable homes), then you are entitled to a property value reduction. Moreover, before you pay to receive the full report, you will get our system’s unique analysis of what we consider to be “the strength of the evidence.”
What does the actual evidence package include?
Our system reviews all information relative to your home that is in our database. It selects other homes that are actually comparable to your home. It analyzes sales data from your neighborhood. It picks homes that our system believes are most like yours. It automatically conducts statistical analysis and adjustments using HCAD’s own processes. Then, a professionally designed report is produced and available to you almost immediately.
Going up against HCAD without evidence is a guaranteed way of emerging from your protest with a token reduction or no reduction at all. Our evidence package is designed to let you go up against HCAD with professional evidence prepared using the same basic process that HCAD uses but includes evidence that best defends lower values for your home.
Brother, Help Your Neighbor. Plus: HCAD using unreliable information on “renovation”
May 20, 2013I was talking to my next door neighbor this weekend about HCAD values on our street, when she told me a disturbing story. A few years ago, they went in to protest their valuation, and the appraiser said “we know you have done all these renovations to your upstairs; one of your neighbors told us so.”
Now there are two possibilities here:
1. The appraiser was lying, which I honestly wouldn’t put past an HCAD employee given all the untruthful things that have been said to me by HCAD employees over the years, or
2. A neighbor really did tell HCAD about renovations.
I think that scenario 2 is probably more likely. I can imagine Neighbor B trying to get his appraisal lowered in his informal meeting saying “you have my house appraised for this much, but my neighbor’s house is only appraised for that much, and their house is much nicer than mine with all sorts of renovations, especially upstairs.”
This is extremely shortsighted. Even if Neighbor B did get a reduction that year because he sold out Neighbor A, what do we think happened the next year? HCAD obviously made note of the report of renovations to Neighbor A’s house, and used it against Neighbor A the next year. It doesn’t work out very well for Neighbor B either, and the next year Neighbor A’s elevated value is used to justify an elevated value for Neighbor B.
Protesting your property tax value is not a zero sum game. You can get a reduction in your value without having your reduction offset by a value increase for someone else. In fact, a value increase for someone else will eventually be used to justify a value increase for you. Don’t rat out your neighbors. You want them to have as low of a value as possible, because by law you have to be equally appraised. As a matter of fact, you should be helping your neighbors reduce their appraisal values. You may have neighbors on your street whose HCAD market values are through the roof because they haven’t protested in years. It might be because they are intimidated by the process, don’t know where to start. With older folks, it might be a combination of that and them not feeling the full impact of their increased market value because of their over 65 exemption. Start educating the people on your street, explain the impact their non protesting has on everyone else, remind them of the deadline, and offer to help them get started. This weekend I distributed letters to everyone on my street. My letter had every house’s HCAD market value, what Jubally thinks the market value should be, and the difference. It reminded them that the deadline is May 31, and offered them help preparing their protest. I also told them about Jubally’s great service that will do all the prep work for them for only $69. I told them that my interest in their property values is completely mercenary – I want their appraisal values to go down so mine will too.
Now that that is out of the way, I want to backtrack a little and revisit that story of the HCAD appraiser telling my neighbor he knew my neighbor’s home was recently renovated because another neighbor had told him so. This second-hand information was being used to justify a value increase on my neighbor’s house – how fair and reliable is that? First of all, HCAD does not even know if that information is truthful. One neighbor could have a grudge against another, and could be grossly exaggerating the level of renovation being done, or outright lying, when no renovation has been done, and yet HCAD has no problem using that information without any verification to justify its valuation increases.
Second, without even verifying for itself the extent of remodeling, HCAD is assigning a number value to how much the remodeling increases the value of the home. You can’t get more unscientific and arbitrary than that.
My house is listed as “extensively remodeled” in HCAD’s database. Every year, it is compared against other “extensively remodeled” houses. Interestingly, all these other “extensively remodeled” houses have a year listed that they were remodeled. My house has “NA” in that field.
Is my house actually extensively remodeled? No. In 2009, in my informal meeting, I actually got the rarest of species – the fair-minded, honest HCAD appraiser. He looked at all my pictures, of my bathroom fixtures, countertops, and cabinets from 1965, my vinyl siding from the 80s, the nonfunctional intercom and security systems from the 1970s, and said “that doesn’t look extensively remodeled to me” and gave me my asking value of $285,000. Yet apparently he did not have any power to change the “extensively remodeled” designation permanently in the system.
Why does HCAD rate my house as “extensively remodeled?” Because that is the kind of glossy language the realtor used when she listed the house in the MLS in 2006. The previous owner had made some superficial cosmetic changes, using the cheapest materials he could find so he could get a higher price, but much of it has not lasted. For instance, the new kitchen cabinets – not solid wood. As the screws from door and drawer pulls and hinges rip out of the cheap material, I have to go through and drill out a big hole and glue in an oak plug to give something to anchor onto. Yet HCAD grades my house “extensively remodeled” simply because the previous owner used misleading buzzwords to attract more prospective buyers to his house.
So here are two examples, literally right next to each other, of HCAD latching onto unreliable second-hand information and using it as justification to raise the values of houses by tens of thousands of dollars.
The 2013 Protest Battle Begins – First Round: iSettle (or should be called iSwindle)
May 17, 2013This post is the work of the editor of this blog.
Well, my year-long cold war with HCAD is getting hot just in time for summer. This time, I have some very knowledgeable new allies on my side. I am not ready to say more just yet, but keep monitoring this blog…and other sources. It is going to get interesting really fast. This is going to be more than just be getting my appraisal value down, it is going to be about some comeuppance for HCAD, that has abused the public trust in Harris County for far too long. But you’ll have to wait to hear more on that for now, so on to my own HCAD battle so far this year.
In 2009, 2010, and 2011, the HCAD market value for my home remained at $285,000 due to my protesting it every year. Last year, it was raised to $323,491. I protested again, unsuccessfully in what was the most disheartening and jading experience with local government I have ever endured, and remains the inspiration for this blog.So this year, like last year, I never got my notice, even though the website showed I had been noticed March 29. Like last year, I called the first week of May and requested it be sent again. The time had come and gone when this second copy should have arrived, and here I am without an iFile number to allow me to file my protest online. Fortunately, I was finally able to get a copy with the assistance of one of those new allies, by going up to the 7th floor of HCAD and getting it in person.Remember, from 2009-2011, my market value was $285,000. Last year it jumped up to $323,491. This year, HCAD has jacked it up to $365,346. Okay, maybe someone at HCAD last year could rationalize to themselves that I had somehow been “too good” at the protest game and kept the value of my home artificially low (even though I followed their rules, and I presented only truthful and accurate information), and so the value on my 2,200 square foot home needed to go up $38,000 in one year. But once that “market-based adjustment” was done last year, you’d think my market value would return to going up in small increments, wouldn’t you? Would you expect it to go up another $42,000 the very next year.
Up until this point, perhaps you thought I was just another whiner complaining because my taxes went up, so I am going to repeat myself for emphasis: My 2,200 square foot, 1 story house from 1965 went up in value $38,000 in one year, and then went up in value another $42,000 the very next year (according to HCAD), without me putting a single cent of renovations into it. If houses I bought actually appreciated as much as HCAD claims mine did in such a short time without me doing any work on them, I could be making a FORTUNE in the real estate market right now flipping houses.
So, with my appraisal notice in hand, I girded my loins for battle. Now normally I wouldn’t waste my time with iSettle, thus forfeiting my opportunity for an informal meeting, but this year’s fight isn’t just about me lowering my taxes, it is about exposing all of HCAD’s crooked procedures, and so my new ally and I decided to paint a target on iSettle.
The first thing I did was get a professional opinion of the true market value of my house, and for that my ally directed me to Jubally Solutions. If you have not tried out this company’s website, I urge you to do so right now, it is fantastic. What you do is type either your street address or your HCAD account number, plus your email address onto their website. They will come back with the amount HCAD has valued your house at, AND what they believe your house’s actual value should be. It is completely free, and they use the same kind of data and considerations HCAD does, they just do it fairly. (Note: I did not receive any monetary or nonmonetary consideration from Jubally, not even a free report. I am recommending them only because I personally think they are a great service)
Jubally is targeted toward people who want to protest by themselves, but I also recommend looking at them before you call a tax agent, because it can help you decide whether or not you have a good enough difference to make hiring a tax agent worthwhile.There is no obligation, they will give you their determination of your market value absolutely free. To see the evidence they used to determine that value, you buy the report, and at $69, it is a really good value. The great thing about it is because they tell you what your value should be, you can tell whether or not it will be worth your while to buy the report. If HCAD appraised your home at $200,000, and Jubally says your home is worth $198,000, you know that their report isn’t going to help you.
However, in my case, Jubally estimated my actual value to be $299,119, over $66,000 less than what HCAD is claiming. I’m a skeptical person by nature, so I wanted to make sure Jubally wasn’t just giving out overly optimistic estimates of value differences between HCAD and actual value in order to get people to buy their reports. So, I used a different email address and went on jubally.com again pretending to be several of my neighbors on my street, and got what Jubally thought their values should be. No one had nearly as high a difference between their HCAD value and their Jubally value, and some of them came back saying the HCAD value and Jubally value agreed. This is a very honest, accurate service that is not going to blow sunshine up your tailpipe. I have my report from them, and I can tell you, it is extremely well done. Anyone would be very well-armed going to battle with one of their reports in his arsenal.
So, I entered my Jubally number into the iSettle system. Here is the pathetic settlement offer I got back:
Dear Property Owner: You filed a 2013 protest with the Harris County Appraisal Review Board using the Electronic Filing and Noticing protest system on Account xxxxxxxxxxxxx. You selected the iSettle™ option, which allows your protest to be considered for an online settlement. After reviewing the protest and hearing evidence, the Harris County Appraisal District staff proposes that the 2013 market value of your property be changed as follows:
Market Appraised Old Value $365,346 $344,850 New Value $361,443 $344,850 A measley $3,900 reduction on a house that I have on good authority is overvalued by $66,000?!?!?! You bet your ass I declined that offer. Stay tuned, because this fight has just started, we are going to war, and it is going public, beyond the confines of my little blog here. This is going to be fun.
Across the state, private companies are able to slash their property-tax assessments, but homeowners aren’t as lucky with their county appraisal districts.
After the private company Houston 8th Wonder purchased the former Six Flags AstroWorld site at Kirby Drive and Loop 610 for $77 million in May 2006, the Harris County Appraisal District turned around and said the empty 104-acre lot was worth $74 million. Instead of taking the $3 million savings and going home, Houston 8th Wonder’s hired-gun lawyers bulldozed HCAD for the next six years in multiple courts and slashed the AstroWorld site’s value to $31 million, resulting in significant lost property-tax revenue for Harris County.
O’Connor: “HCAD will be so busy that they will likely offer a reduction just to get you out the door.”
Over the past 18 years, the Dallas Country Club, a members-only group that boasts a 100-acre golf course and dynamite views of the downtown Dallas cityscape, has routinely sued and prevailed over the Dallas Central Appraisal District. In 2013, the Highland Park property was appraised at a little under $22 million, a sum that critics say is ridiculous and allows the Mockingbird Lane club to skirt significant property-tax responsibility.
And in San Antonio, the posh JW Marriott Hill Country Resort & Spa, with a construction price tag that nearly eclipsed $600 million, has been able to lower its value by $125 million by winning multiple lawsuits against the Bexar County Appraisal District. At press time, two outstanding court cases — and millions more in property-tax revenue — are at stake between the resort and the appraisal district.
Michael Amezquita, chief appraiser of the Bexar County Appraisal District, says a majority of San Antonio’s luxury hotels are ditching millions of dollars in property taxes due to a loophole in the state tax code.
Josh Huskin
Michael Amezquita, chief appraiser of the Bexar County Appraisal District, says a majority of San Antonio’s luxury hotels are ditching millions of dollars in property taxes due to a loophole in the state tax code.
District 13 Senator Rodney Ellis (Democrat-Houston) isn’t hopeful that the Texas Legislature will take a hard look at the state’s property-tax problems, which have been aggravated by the state’s lack of sales-price disclosure, during the 84th Legislature in 2015.
Marco Torres
District 13 Senator Rodney Ellis (Democrat-Houston) isn’t hopeful that the Texas Legislature will take a hard look at the state’s property-tax problems, which have been aggravated by the state’s lack of sales-price disclosure, during the 84th Legislature in 2015.
A former HCAD employee says that due to HCAD’s clumsiness in court proceedings, the former Six Flags AstroWorld, which HCAD valued at $74 million, is now valued at only $31 million.
Courtesy of Google Earth
A former HCAD employee says that due to HCAD’s clumsiness in court proceedings, the former Six Flags AstroWorld, which HCAD valued at $74 million, is now valued at only $31 million.
Todd Stewart, an attorney for Olson & Olson, says that the 2014 property-tax protest season could become the ugliest one in history.
Marco Torres
Todd Stewart, an attorney for Olson & Olson, says that the 2014 property-tax protest season could become the ugliest one in history.
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Houston (Texas)Michael AmezquitaTed WhitmerTaxesPublic Finance
There are hundreds more cases — from El Paso to East Texas and at many points in between — that will likely be marked in the loss column for appraisal districts. At press time, the Travis Central Appraisal District was locked in a colossal tussle with the owners of Austin’s Circuit of the Americas Formula One racetrack while in Port Arthur, a recent win by a Valero refinery forced the Jefferson County school districts to give back $16 million in tax revenue.
The sobering big-picture outcome: hundreds of millions of lost dollars for Texas’s school districts, roadways, emergency medical services and fire protection.
“I’ve been sued every year by [JW Marriott],” says Michael Amezquita, the fiery chief appraiser of the Bexar County Appraisal District, which is currently facing $10.3 billion in appraisal-reduction litigation compared to the annual $4 billion to $5 billion average. In the 2011 tax year, BCAD’s ten most expensive courtroom losses to class A commercial and industrial property owners resulted in an absence of $1.8 million in tax revenue for San Antonio-area school districts.
“Valero sues every year,” Amezquita adds. “H-E-B [based in San Antonio] is suing every year now. They never used to sue me before.” The Houston Press’s interview request with Bill Day of Valero’s media relations department in San Antonio fell on deaf ears.
Appraisal districts and property-tax experts say the uniform and equal (sometimes called “equity”) provision, cemented into the Texas Constitution in 1997 amid yawns from lawmakers, is the evil responsible for Texas’s defective property-tax system. Also known as the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, the statute created an annual circus in which big-money property owners and appraisal districts argue over how best to value the land, the sticks and the bricks, with the property owners almost always winning.
A 2011 study by Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts Susan Combs concluded that the state’s property-tax system generated more than $40 billion in revenue (or 47 percent of total tax revenue) in fiscal year 2011. There are billions of dollars on top of the $40 billion that should be there but aren’t, according to District 13 Senator Rodney Ellis. The Democratic lawmaker from Houston says that for every million dollars removed from the tax rolls, school districts, fire departments and emergency medical services are squeezed out of approximately $30,000.
The problem has been exacerbated by Texas’s absence of sales-price disclosure, which gives property owners a running start in property-tax disputes because appraisal districts must rely on private databases to procure sales numbers. Even then, it’s impossible to seize reliable data for every property — in 2013, HCAD was able to grab decent sales information on only 681 of Harris County’s 3,838 commercial transactions.
“Whoever heard of doing an appraisal without sales information?” says Amezquita. Idaho, Utah and Alaska — whose combined population is only 928,000 more than the total number of residents of Harris County — are the only other states that lock away all sales figures on taxable properties.
“It’s like boxing with one hand tied behind your back,” says former HCAD chief appraiser Jim Robinson, who retired from HCAD in May 2013 after serving 28 years at the agency. “What we see happening time and time again is tax consultants get everything that’s out there and they’ll pick a set of alleged comparables at the very bottom of the list and argue that they should be adjusted to that.”
What happens next, says Ellis, is that “as properties above the median are reduced to the target valuation, the median drops. The result is a constant and growing erosion of the tax base” on which Texas’s public-school finance channels are dependent.
As uncovered by the Press last year (“Shakedown,” Steve Jansen, April 18, 2013), homeowners who have deeds to properties in the $80,000-to-$150,000 range are fronting the heavy tax burden.
HCAD, in a practice that property-tax experts have called an Enron-like scam, routinely cries uncle when confronted by big-money property owners but becomes an immovable wall with moderate-income homeowners over their assessed values. Since 2000, according to figures provided by Ellis’s office, the overall property-tax burden for the state’s single-family homeowners has increased from 45 percent to 54 percent while the property-tax load for businesses has decreased from 21 percent to less than 20 percent. (The remaining 26 percent consists of more than ten property categories, including vacant lots; utilities; and oil, gas and minerals.)
Earlier this year, HCAD twisted the knife on Houston’s homeowners by inflating the values of Harris County’s residential properties by an average of 16 percent, the highest increase Patrick O’Connor has seen in his long career as president of O’Connor & Associates. However, for the first time, residential property owners who file a formal protest by the June 2 deadline could prevail en masse.
“HCAD will be so busy that they will likely offer a reduction just to get you out the door,” says O’Connor, who heads the state’s largest property-tax protest business. Because Texas’s other major metropolitan appraisal districts will be buried with lawsuits and protests — the Dallas Central Appraisal District typically processes 100,000 protests in an eight-week period — a similar result in Dallas-Fort Worth, San Antonio and Austin is possible.
(DCAD, whose losses from successful equal and uniform appeals in 2011 took $1.1 million off the tax base, refused the Press’s repeated requests to speak with chief appraiser Kenneth Nolan. The Press also tried unsuccessfully to get Dallas County Tax Office tax assessor/collector John Ames to answer our questions.)
HCAD’s burden with the ambiguous uniform and equal law is one thing, but bringing a weak game plan to important court cases is another, according to a lawyer formerly with the agency. The ex-employee, who cited the attorney-client privilege and wished to remain anonymous, says that every day homeowners are partially saddled with additional property taxes because HCAD has bungled case after case against Harris County’s formidable business-property owners.
Current HCAD chief appraiser Sands Stiefer tells the Press that his lawyers are pressed into hit-or-miss decisions due to the thousands of lawsuits that HCAD sifts through each year. “Often, the plaintiff will withdraw at the last minute,” says Stiefer. “This poses an extraordinary challenge for us because we don’t know which cases will go to trial and which will not.”
After years of silence, HCAD, which was nearly sued in January by the Harris County Commissioners Court for undervaluing high-dollar commercial properties and shifting the tax load to homeowners, finally appears poised for a fight.
Along with raising 2013 values on a handful of Class A commercial and industrial properties by 50 percent, Harris County has commissioned Ted Whitmer, a highly regarded independent appraiser and property-tax lawyer, to conduct a study that could uncover some ugly truths about HCAD’s commercial valuation and settlement practices. The first-of-its-kind analysis probably won’t be like the Texas Comptroller’s much-ballyhooed property value study, which in 2013 concluded that HCAD is only one percentage point away from perfection with commercial property and business-personal appraisals.
George Scott — a former HCAD employee who has exposed many of HCAD’s issues on his website, George Scott Reports — says the results of Whitmer’s audit, which HCAD fast-tracked following the Harris County Commissioners Court’s lawsuit threat, could have legs in the 84th session of the Texas Legislature, scheduled to meet from January 13 through June 1, 2015.
“Two things are going to happen this year,” says Scott. “Properties will substantially hold values or they won’t hold value and the legislature will wake up.”
Debbie Cartwright, director of the property-tax assistance division of the state comptroller’s office, says that her office has no say in leveling the field between powerful property owners and appraisal districts. “Only the Texas Legislature can address this matter,” Cartwright says. “The Comptroller has no authority to intervene, review or provide advice regarding value protests and litigation.”
As for the state’s ultimate gatekeeper, Ellis says, “Unless it is put front and center, [the Texas Legislature] won’t look for ways to go after vested, entrenched interests in Texas.”
In other words, appraisal districts may not want to count on the folks in Austin.
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In a few months, after property owners have ripped open their 2014 notices and filed lawsuits, protest season, which typically runs from May to August, will be in red-alert mode for appraisal districts.
Western Refining didn’t even wait to find out the value of its West Texas refinery before suing. Despite winning a settlement in 2013 that knocked down the value of its $1 billion industrial parcel by $440 million — and, as a result, took $12 million off its tax base — the company jumped the gun and decided to take the El Paso Central Appraisal District through the litigation gauntlet for the fifth year in a row.
Because appraisals occur annually, a property owner can sue every single year, even if he has just knocked down a building’s value by millions. The carnage in 2014 could become the worst ever seen.
“It’s not a one-time shop,” says Todd Stewart, an attorney at Olson & Olson, one of the law firms that HCAD retains to defend the agency in appraisal lawsuits. “That’s how we ended up with 33 of the 34 downtown [Houston] skyscrapers in litigation this year. This is what happens when you end up with 99.99 percent of everybody afraid that they’re going to get left behind if they don’t at least buy a dance card by filing a lawsuit.”
The state tax code’s “remedy for unequal appraisal” section — the statute that has given central appraisal districts migraines for nearly 20 years — was added to the Texas Constitution in 1997, sans debate, after Representative Paul Hilbert offered the amendment in the waning moments of the 75th Texas Legislature.
“It was one of about 34 floor amendments offered that day…they said, ‘We’re just offering it for some technical cleanup,’” says Stewart, who has been working in appraisal litigation since 1985. “If I had been a member of the House and this had come up as a floor amendment with no fiscal notes or legislative comment, I would’ve voted for it. It was innocuous.”
Amezquita, in a phone interview with the Press, can rattle off the Section 42.26, Paragraph a3, provision from memory, nailing word after arbitrary word with heartfelt disgust: “The district court shall grant relief on the ground that a property is appraised unequally if the appraised value of the property exceeds the median appraised value of a reasonable number of comparable properties appropriately adjusted.”
Prior to 1997, property owners who took issue with an appraisal district’s value would protest based on Section 42.26, Paragraphs a1 and a2 — the part of the tax code that deals with appraisal ratio studies. Now “no one challenges on [paragraphs a1 and a2],” says Amezquita. “[Paragraph a3] is where the money is. Any blind monkey can win that deal. If I wanted to work for the other side, I could triple my money tomorrow.”
Since it was enacted, the law has been expanded in multiple sessions of the Texas Legislature, the most significant change coming in 2003, when “appropriately adjusted” was tacked onto the end of Paragraph a3. With the additional broad stroke of interpretation, ace lawyers have curried favor with the courts, leading an overwhelming majority of judges to side with property owners because there isn’t a definition of comparability in the tax code.
“Nobody has to use the yardstick of market value to keep you honest. They can just get an appraiser — and there are plenty of them out there who are hungry — to come in and pick properties,” says Stewart. “The way the courts are interpreting the statute, they say that’s permissible, and that’s what created the problem.”
Along with the state’s lack of sales-price disclosure, Stiefer says that Texas prohibits its appraisers from auditing any and all sales transactions. “This means the playing field isn’t level,” says Stiefer. “A homeowner can’t hide her house, but businesses can — and do — hide assets.”
West Virginia, Illinois, Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas also ensure equity among taxpayers in their respective state constitutions. However, none of those states boasts the complex mix of properties, population size or big-money dealings that Texas has.
“This isn’t a Democrat or Republican thing. This has been going on since 1997,” Amezquita says. “It’s not a tax policy. This is nothing more than a scam.”
_____________________
Houston 8th Wonder was able to knock down the value of the AstroWorld site two separate times by millions due to the favorable equity statute as well as HCAD’s ineptitude in district court proceedings, according to the former in-house lawyer with HCAD, whom we’ll call Edward.
In 2008, HCAD, represented by Olson & Olson, lost a pricey case to Houston Laureate Associates, which operates and leases commercial buildings and office parks in Harris County, because HCAD walked into the 234th District Court without an expert. It was an appalling oversight by HCAD, says Edward, because historically, the court proceedings have become a battle of the experts. HCAD pleaded to the 14th Court of Appeals and the Texas Supreme Court to hear the case. Both courts refused.
A year later, according to Edward, Riverway Holdings, which owns two upscale office buildings on South Post Oak Lane near the Galleria, sued HCAD and submitted an expert report by the 281st District Court’s cutoff date. Riverway’s lawyer, after learning that HCAD had blown its deadline, filed a motion for summary judgment, which basically argues that a case doesn’t need to go to trial if one of the parties hasn’t submitted evidence. The court agreed.
Instead of giving up, HCAD, led by Olson & Olson, again went to the 14th Court of Appeals and was shown the door. The district again appealed to the Texas Supreme Court, which negated HCAD’s petition for review.
In these and similar cases, “HCAD never had an expert witness or report on uniform and equal, and they lost every single one,” says Edward. HCAD chief appraiser Stiefer, who says that Olson & Olson billed the agency $5.8 million in 2013 and who expects to receive an $8 million bill from the Wortham Tower-stationed firm for 2014, disputes this claim.
“Currently we have thousands of lawsuits filed every year, and we produce hundreds, if not thousands, of expert reports for them,” explains Stiefer. “Whether to put an expert on the stand, report or no, is a tactical decision. It is also dictated by the cost of preparing the reports. It is not unusual for us to have 20 or 30 trial settings a week.”
Against Houston 8th Wonder, Edward says, HCAD shot off every one of its mangled toes.
During a Harris County Appraisal Review Board hearing, Houston 8th Wonder protested its $74 million appraised value, which was already $3 million lower than what the company had paid for the AstroWorld site, a fact HCAD wouldn’t discover until much later. The ARB, which functions independently of HCAD, slashed the value to $44 million. An upset HCAD sued the property owner, who countersued.
The case went to the 234th District Court, where “HCAD went full blast on market value based on newspaper clippings. [Houston 8th Wonder] argued uniform and equal and brought in a uniform and equal expert. HCAD had no expert to counter,” says Edward. The value sank another $13 million, to $31 million.
HCAD argued to the First Court of Appeals that the uniform and equal provision is unconstitutional. The court disagreed. Again, HCAD appealed to the Texas Supreme Court, which instead of simply denying its petition for summary review issued a petition denied and adopted a decision by the 234th District Court into its own standard in summer 2013.
“Basically, it lets a pseudo-expert give unsupported testimony as to what’s comparable,” says Robinson, who had transitioned to his new position as deputy director of special projects at the Harris County Budget Management Department by the time the Texas Supreme Court rendered its decision. “You can testify as an expert if you aren’t an expert, and there aren’t defined guidelines on how you measure comparability and how you make adjustments.”
Robinson explains that HCAD can now get dragged into a dark alley when each of Harris County’s five refineries files its inevitable lawsuits.
“In any given year, there’s going to be at least one, maybe two or more in litigation. Each one of them argues for a different way of determining comparability,” Robinson explains. “What’s good for Shell might be terrible for Exxon, and what’s good for Exxon might be terrible for Valero. But each one says, ‘My way is the only way you can do this.’ They pick the way that’s more beneficial to them.”
In the meantime, HCAD will stick to its guns in court and argue that the uniform and equal statute is unconstitutional, even though the agency “keep[s] recycling this old public policy argument and [has] thrown away millions of dollars,” argues Edward.
“We haven’t changed our view that Section 42.26, Paragraph a3, to the extent that it allows reductions in appraisals without a showing that the property is appraised at a higher percentage of market value than is true for other properties, is unconstitutional,” Stiefer says.
On the other hand, Stewart of Olson & Olson says that HCAD may need to reconsider its legal strategies.
“You can argue that the statute, on its face, is unconstitutional — that’s a very tough burden to get past — or you can argue that it may not be unconstitutional on its face, but it’s unconstitutional as it’s being applied,” Stewart says. “I think that’s the direction that taxing authorities and appraisal districts and everyone else ought to be focused on.”
_____________________
Given HCAD’s struggles with big-time commercial properties, the appraisal district says the opposite occurs with residential parcels. “HCAD does a super job with appraising homes, and they’re very consistent with the values,” says former HCAD chief appraiser Robinson. “The state’s studies continue to show that.”
The Texas comptroller’s 2013 property value study — the same one that concluded that HCAD is nailing commercial appraisals — found that HCAD appraised residential property at a median level of 97 percent of market value, or only three percentage points from so-called flawlessness.
Not so fast, says O’Connor. The property-tax agent cites Ted Whitmer’s cordial but scathing presentation before HCAD in July 2013 — as well as Harris County’s decision to hire Whitmer to conduct an independent market valuation study — as indicators that HCAD hasn’t been playing by the rules.
“Mr. Whitmer is correct. HCAD’s unequal appraisal evidence generates a predetermined value, thus misleading taxpayers and members of the Harris County Appraisal Review Board,” says O’Connor. “There is no question in my mind that HCAD management knows they report results that are predetermined and misleading. These types of seeming minor transgressions can be the stepping-stone to more serious violations.”
Independent property-tax agent John Osenbaugh, who claims to have evidence of transgressions — ranging from cherry-picking properties in order to achieve higher values to targeting low-income neighborhoods for increases — opines that HCAD may already dabble in white-collar crime.
“There are grievous errors, and the people involved are too qualified for this to have been happenstance. They know what they’re doing,” Osenbaugh told the Press last year. “It’s one thing if it’s by accident; that’s okay and somewhat forgivable, but when it’s clearly not, this is a scheme that makes Enron look like amateurs.”
With backlash at a high, some Texas lawmakers have tried to tailor the law to favor appraisal districts and homeowners.
Toward the tail end of the 83rd Texas Legislature, District 10 Senator Wendy Davis (Democrat-Fort Worth) and District 139 Representative Sylvester Turner (Democrat-Houston) co-authored a Senate bill that would have forced a hard look at the language of the equal and uniform provision and a House bill that could have redefined market value. But each proposed law died with the close of the 2013 session.
Ellis, who’s fairly outspoken on property-tax issues, is willing to stick his neck out only so far during the 84th Legislature in 2015.
“I’m perfectly capable of starting forest fires of my own. I’ve done it for 30 years, since I’ve been in public office,” says Ellis, who adds that he needs the major participants — the chief appraisers in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Austin — to team up with him. “I want them to step out there with me, and I’ll work with them.”
Sounds good in theory, but according to Amezquita, who has been attending legislative sessions since 1997, Texas’s chief appraisers are invisible at the State Capitol, partly because they have no one representing their interests.
“I can tell you that chief appraisers don’t have any more stroke at the legislature than you or I or a man on the moon…there’s just so much apathy,” says Amezquita, who asked the Bexar County Commissioners Court to sue him “so that we could play this out in a public venue.” His request failed.
Critics of the mass appraisal system say that the power players in Austin need to step up their game before a change in the law is seriously discussed. Blogger George Scott suggests that the state be tasked with valuing properties of more than $50 million, while Amezquita thinks the state should commission a market-value study to see how those values may have eroded. “I guarantee they’re not going to come back with a pretty picture for the legislature,” Amezquita says.
Travis Central Appraisal District chief appraiser Marya Crigler thinks the real hitch is in the absence of sales-price disclosure, an issue that’s kicking sand in the face of TCAD during its donnybrook with Circuit of the Americas. Crigler declined comment when asked about the pending litigation between TCAD and the property owners of Austin’s F1 racetrack, which was assessed at $4.2 million in 2013, according to a records search on TCAD’s website.
In the absence of sales information, the lawyers representing the property owners of the track, the only one of its kind in the United States, will insist that the sleek piece of real estate, which has attracted international acclaim and big bucks from overseas, is overvalued. Without a comparable piece of property in this country, the powerhouse attorneys and experts will look at similar tracks in Korea, Turkey, China and Bahrain and come up with an “appropriately adjusted” lowball value. And they will probably win the argument.
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Whitmer tells the Press that he’s been backed with a $150,000 budget from Harris County to test HCAD’s 2014 appraised values for Houston’s high-end office towers, office parks and apartment complexes. Depending on his results, which are due May 15, the lawsuit threat by Harris County Commissioners Court might be executed.
“It’s going to be limited since I’m not taking the entire sample, but maybe it starts a discussion that says it’s statistically significant enough to know that there has been a downward push on numbers,” says College Station-based Whitmer. “What it won’t do is tell us what’s really going on. We can guess, talk about it, debate it, but I think it’s going to give us a starting point.”
On the residential property side, O’Connor, at the time of writing, said his firm, which hadn’t even started its 2014 marketing campaign, has seen a 49 percent increase in new business from homeowners thirsting to file protests. O’Connor & Associates, which represents homeowners in front of the Harris County Appraisal Review Board, takes half of a client’s tax savings from successful protests and no money if the protests fail.
He won’t be shocked if more than 500,000 Harris County homeowners overwhelm HCAD’s Northwest Freeway offices during protest season. The current record, according to O’Connor, is 387,000 protests in 2009, the year HCAD increased single-family values by 7 percent.
The added pressure on the appraisal district could delay tax-roll certification from the end of September till the middle of November. “If there is a large increase in the number of hearings, HCAD is going to need to find a method to resolve them much more quickly or the HCAD Board of Directors and tax entities will be most upset,” explains O’Connor.
The surge of homeowner protests has spawned Jubally, a one-year-old, two-person enterprise that charges $69.99 in exchange for a TurboTax-like report as well as tips to help Harris County homeowners represent themselves at protest hearings. According to Jubally co-owner Blake Roberts, 97 percent of his company’s clients who have gone through a formal hearing process have received an average reduction of $623 in saved tax money. The company plans to expand to Travis County in time for the 2014 protest season.
In the meantime, HCAD appears to have climbed through the ropes and entered the ring.
In March, HCAD won a district court order that forces Valero to disclose financial data in order to generate an accurate market value for the Harris County refinery. If the appraisal district prevails in the appeals stage, “it will once and for all help break this despicable cycle of corporate welfare for property-tax purposes on major industrial property, of which Valero is just the tip of a huge iceberg,” Scott says.
It could also be a needed power shift toward appraisal districts and ordinary homeowners, which, according to BCAD’s Amezquita, have become chew toys that the rich and mighty tear to shreds every year.
“My file is probably going to be $130 billion this year. So what if I lose $5 or $6 billion? Well, the ‘So what?’ is that the people who should be paying those taxes aren’t paying, even though they can afford to pay,” says Amezquita. “Homeowners are picking up those taxes because they cannot avail themselves of this same process.
“I’ve been at this 33 years, and I’ve never seen anything like it. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do next.”
http://www.houstonpress.com/2014-05-01/news/texas-property-tax-assessments/full/
While Blake Roberts says his new company Jubally Solutions is designed to help homeowners successfully protest their own property values before the Harris County Appraisal District, he believes it is essential that every homeowner protest in 2013 even if they decide to use the services of a property tax agent.
“Our company’s mission is to empower individual property owners to represent themselves. However, we realize that some may lack the confidence to do that this year,” Blake Roberts says. “The important message we have is that the Harris County Appraisal District has systemically overvalued residential properties based on actual market or equity standards.”
LINK TO QUICK FACTS ABOUT JUBALLY SOLUTIONS
“Every homeowner should protest every year and Jubally is totally geared to provide homeowners with a high quality of professional evidence they need to give themselves the best chance to succeed in that effort,” he said.
Jubally’s state of the art technology has already sampled and tested the 2013 property values produced by HCAD. This sampling and testing includes both random selections of accounts as well as neighborhood-specific samples.
“What our review process has already proven is that homeowners in Harris County are systemically overvalued either on actual market value or on an equity basis. HCAD’s mass appraisal process has produced significant overvaluation on homes throughout Harris County,” Roberts says. “The only way to correct this is for homeowners to aggressive pursue the full options available in the protest process system.”
What Roberts says he has learned over the years is that HCAD has a “give the dog a bone” approach to homeowners. “In other words, HCAD will often give a minor value reduction at the informal level hoping that will be enough to keep citizens from going before an Appraisal Review Board hearing,” he said.
Roberts calls the district’s much-touted online iSettle program as a perfect example of why homeowners need to be much more aggressive in representing their interests in achieving a lower tax bill on their home.
First, Roberts noted, homeowners have caught on to the “gimmick” nature of the iSettle program since it was first introduced. Use of the iSettle program has fallen dramatically since its first full year of implementation because homeowners have learned it doesn’t really function in their interests.
“Homeowners cannot interact or negotiate or fully represent their interest with a computer. What they need to understand is that when they use iSettle, they are sacrificing 50% of their negotiating power because it counts as an informal meeting,” Roberts says.
Roberts says HCAD is supported by taxing jurisdictions that want the highest possible property values and that is not consistent with the goals of individual homeowners.
The evidence package that Jubally provides clients includes statistical analysis of neighborhood sales and an analysis of other homes to determine if an equity based appeal is appropriate.
“When you don’t appeal the value of your home, you’re stuck with HCAD’s value. If you are able to lower it each year, then it will start lower the following year,” Roberts says. “Protesting can easily save you hundreds of dollars each year and thousands as compounding takes place over the years.”
“Many people think that if their property has a high appraised value from the central appraisal district, it will command a higher sale values,” he said. “That is simply not true. Think of it this way: would you rather purchase a home that you know has too high taxes or would you rather purchase a home that has a low a tax bill as possible and one that you have a chance of keeping the taxes as low as feasible?
The company name of Jubally has a special meaning to Roberts, a devout Christian.
Jubilee with the traditional spelling has its historical roots embedded in the Jewish and Christian faith. In the 50th year of the Jubilee, ‘alienated property should be restored to the former owner.’ “We have added “ally” to the phrase to symbolize friendship. We simply want to serve the community because we care about families,” he said.
“Our goal is to help give you the evidence you need to protect your family and your home every year,” Roberts says. “This is a business involving many years of thought but it is also a mission because helping families protect their homes is worth the effort.”
“I encourage property owners to visit our website at jubally.com and we are going to communicate with you through various sources throughout this tax year,” he said.
