How to hire a firm to help protest your Texas property taxes

Every year, county appraisal districts around the state assess property values for homeowners with results that are sometimes inaccurate. If a homeowner believes they are being overtaxed on personal property, they can protest their appraisals.

Some homeowners go through this process themselves, while others may hire a company to take care of it for them. 

Here’s what to know about the process to protest and how to hire a firm to to protest your appraised value.

Every year, county appraisal districts across Texas determine each property’s value based on a mass appraisal process. 

The mass appraisal process takes into account the properties being appraised, market area, supply and demand of the property market, income and land value.

Richie Gill, partner with the property tax consulting firm Gill, Denson and Co., said the process can easily lead to overtaxation for many property owners, both commercial and residential.

“If you think of the Harris County Appraisal District, they are trying to appraise hundreds of thousands of properties every single year and that is a big daunting task, especially when you have limited staff, limited resources,” Gill said. “Because of those budget and staffing constraints, they use what’s called mass appraisal methods, meaning they use software to come up with values of people’s homes and people’s businesses.”

Harris County Chief Appraiser Roland Altinger said mistakes in the appraisal process are not uncommon with 7,000 residential neighborhoods in the county.

“You cannot appraise 1.9 million parcels and not have errors, and that’s why we have due process rights for the property owner to bring to our attention where we might have made a mistake,” Altinger said.

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Due to the mass appraisal method’s generalized approach, Gill said the appraisal data can be outdated and inaccurate.

“(The county) doesn’t know if the property is in good condition, bad condition, how the neighborhood looks, and so they’re basically making an educated guess on the value of the property,” Gill said.

Gill and Kyler Knudsen, principal with Appraisal Protest in Southlake, both said many homeowners leave opportunities on the table by failing to protest.

“Values don’t just stay stagnant, so it’s either up or down,” Knudsen said. “You’re seeing a lot of fluctuation on the commercial side too, be it industrial, retail, residential restaurants.”

Gill said it is a right to protest, a sentiment echoed by Altinger and other experts in the Houston area. 

“It’s their legal right to do it and there are some people that never do anything about it,” Gill said. “They’re paying hundreds or thousands of dollars more than they should be every single year. So, exercise your right.”

Property owners can also lose money by failing to file for property tax exemptions, such as homestead exemptions available for residents older than 65. Homeowners should file for their relevant exemptions before protesting the value, Gill and Knudsen said. 

Whether a property owner decides to take on the process themselves or hire a firm, the process follows the same steps. 

First, a protest is filed by the property owner, followed by an informal hearing from the local appraisal district. Depending on the county, appraisal protests can be submitted online, through the mail or in person. Evidence can include comparable property values, sales prices and property improvements.

“This informal hearing is sometimes done online, and it’s sometimes done in person at the appraisal district,” Gill said. “ It’s a meeting where the property owner or the representative talks to the appraisal staff and says, ‘This is why we believe the property is being over appraised. Here’s our evidence.’”

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While the process can stop at the informal level with a settlement, the process may move forward to a more formal hearing with the appraisal review board of the property owner’s county, consisting of three local citizens looking to hear evidence and reasoning for why the owner’s taxes should be changed.

“It’s really important to have strong, compelling evidence, just like if you’re in court defending yourself in a court case,” Gill said. “Otherwise you’re gonna go through this whole process and not be successful.”

Finally, a decision is made by the appraisal district. If the results are not what the appealing property owner was expecting, then they can file a rare judicial appeal afterwards. 

“We basically take it out of the county’s hands and if the property owner is being egregiously overtaxed, we can bring it through judicial appeal and that’s another opportunity for us to get the case heard,” Gill said.

Both Gill and Knudsen think more people should protest their appraised property value, although they said more people started to protest in the early 2020s due to COVID-19 and its effects driving up home values and taxes.

“We saw the gloves come off for everybody in ‘21 and ‘22,” Knudsen said. “Some of those values doubled and it was asinine. The market justified some of that. Sometimes we went in and we’re like, ‘Okay, we can’t really find anything that says your house shouldn’t be twice the value you paid for it.”

Tax consulting firms can be hired to protest a property appraisal value, with benefits like regularly updated property value knowledge and expertise on the protesting process and court-like procedures. The firm can also help protesters see if they even need to protest in the first place by checking their property values.

“We know how to file the paperwork, schedule the hearings and find compelling evidence,” Gill said. “We have advanced appraisal software and appraisers on our staff. This is all they do all day, 365 days a year. We do this one specific task and get really good at it, put together new appraisal grids and know why we believe there should be a new value.”

Altinger said he thinks property owners are capable of protesting on their own.

“You know your house better than anybody else,” Altinger said. “You know all the good and the bad about your house. Why not do it yourself? We’ve got all the mechanisms for you to do it yourself, so why not do it yourself?”

Altinger said the price of hiring a firm to protest taxes may not be worth the money if they do not obtain a reduction in taxes.

“We’re not evil,” he said of the appraisal district. “We’re here to get the right value on your property. Don’t be intimidated if you have to go in front of the appraisal review board. They’re citizens of the community that listen to your case. It’s not something to be intimidated about.”

While a protest can be filed without a property tax consultant, Knudsen said the process can be complex and confusing.

He said homeowners also have the option to bring in a consultant even if they already started their protest.

“Homeowners do not do quite as good as tax consultants,” Knudsen said. “Everybody has the right to do it themselves. If a case is submitted and the county comes back and says, ‘We don’t think that’s credible,’ that’s when we can step in or help out.”

Some property tax consultant firms also have their own mass appeals made to the county on the behalf of multiple clients.

Typically, property tax consultants take a percentage of the funds saved through the protest.  

“For instance, if you hire us, we only charge a percent of the savings and that’s on our website.” Gill said. “So if we don’t save anything, you’re not paying anything. It’s a kind of a risk free process to assess.”  

Prices vary by firm with some taking a larger percent of the amount saved than others and some firms charging a flat rate. If the protest fails, many firms do not charge the client for their services.

“Firms are charging anywhere from 20 percent of your savings up to 40 percent of your savings,” Knudsen said. “Sometimes we’ll visit your property, but we have that interview with you. We put in the effort and we put in the work.”