Property taxes in Texas are due on October 1 and late after January 31st of the following year. Why should we be talking about them now you ask? Because very soon, in the next few weeks, you will receive a notice from the Central Appraisal District (CAD) of the Texas county in which your property resides. This notice will tell you the county’s idea of the market value of your property.
This notice gives the property value that the CAD will use in assessing your property taxes. You have a right to protest that value if you think it’s too high. I suppose you could protest if it’s too low but why would you?
The assessed value of your property has no effect on the value of your property for marketing purposes should you decide to sell your home. Theoretically, your appraised value (for property tax purposes) should be market value. Unfortunately, that is not always the case.
You have until May 31 to protest the CAD’s value. Here’s where we at SunWest, REALTORS® can help. We develop a comprehensive market analysis (CMA) of the value of your property. Once we have done that, you will have the information necessary to tell you whether or not you should challenge the CAD’s assessed value.
If you decide that you should contest the value, we will provide you with that information so you can make a successful (hopefully) challenge of your property’s value. Most CADs have an informal process that makes a protest simple and relatively painless. Here is the form for Denton County.
The thought is always to keep your property values as low as possible hence keeping your taxes low. You may think that the CAD only raised my value a small amount so I’m not going to bother with it. The problem is, in this market especially, that your actual property value may have went down not up–so a small increase could be deceiving.
Give us an opportunity to run a CMA on your property and keep the CAD (don’t you love all the acronyms?) honest. This is a service we provide free of charge on an annual basis and can be done over the telephone with a few simple questions. There’s no obligation, we just want you to think kindly of us when you have any real estate questions. Please give us an opportunity to save you some money! [email protected]