Click on Play Button to Watch Sean Bukowski Interviewed by CBS News-Austin
AUSTIN, Texas — Time is running out to protest your property value in hopes of lowering your property taxes. May 15 is the deadline for most homeowners to file their intention to protest. If you haven’t yet, you’ll want to get online and submit your protest by 11:59 p.m. Monday.
Marya Crigler is the Chief Appraiser for the Travis Central Appraisal District.
“Always get in line online, do it early, and then we can get you to have a discussion with an appraiser. If you don’t come to a resolution with the appraiser, you can come back to a formal hearing. You’ll be scheduled for a formal hearing by our appraisal review board,” she explains.
While it may seem like a complicated process, real estate attorney Sean Bukowski, of Bukowski Law Firm, encourages everyone to file protests. He says homeowners should start their protest by checking these boxes, “incorrect appraised value,” and “market value unequal compared with other properties.” In some counties, they’re one box and in others, they’re two separate boxes.
“I don’t think there’s any real negative to protesting,” explains Bukowski, who adds, you can always choose to withdraw your protest if you change your mind. Rarely can you still protest if you miss the initial filing deadline of May 15?
Bukowski’s firm helps commercial property owners with about 250 protests every year. If you ask him what works he’ll tell you—it’s data.
“You’re not going to get very far if you go in and say, ‘My house is older. It’s not in as good of shape as the one next door, so I think it should be lower. What you want to do is say, ‘My house is lower and because of that it should be here’s some analysis that shows it should be 10% of a reduction from the house next door.’ That’s going to influence the appraisal board a lot more,” Bukowski explains.Deadline for taxpayers to protest property values May 15
He says it’s also important to consider how much the real estate market has changed due to interest rates and values going down.
“They might have increased the assessed value of your property, but when you go look at some of the reports for what the market is like—it’s down. It’s down from last year. It’s down from the midpoint of last year. It should not be increasing. It should be holding steady or down,” Bukowski adds.
You might consider hiring a professional to help protest your valuation if you feel the property is significantly overvalued or if you’re in the process of building your home. If you take issue with the actual tax bill, cities counties, and school districts all play a part.
“If you want to protest the amount of taxes that you’re paying, that’s the discussion that happens later in the season with the taxing entities when they start setting their budget and their tax rate,” Crigler explains.
The actual savings come with a homestead limitation which caps taxable value increases at 10 percent, but homeowners are only eligible for that this year if they lived in their home on January 1, 2022. If you have not applied for a homestead exemption for your primary residence, click here to learn more about Travis County and here for the same information from Williamson County.
To learn more about effectively protesting your property’s value, click here. If you choose to submit your protest by mail instead of online you must make sure the protest is postmarked by May 15, 2023. The Travis Central Appraisal District encourages taxpayers to have their envelopes stamped with a postmark inside of the post office because items dropped in a mailbox may not be properly postmarked.
