The Texas Legislature recently approved a new homestead exemption for 100% disabled veterans. See the link under CURRENT NEWS or click here for more information.

To ensure a smooth flow of the protest hearing process, hearings are scheduled throughout the day. If you arrive more than 30 minutes early for your hearing, it will be difficult to find a parking space at HCAD and the seating capacity of our 1st floor waiting area may be exceeded.

For these reasons, in cooperation with the Houston Fire Marshal’s office, we request that you not arrive for your hearing more than 30 minutes before the time it is scheduled. This will help alleviate the possibility of overcrowding and will reduce the amount of time you may need to wait for your hearing to begin.

The Harris County Appraisal District (HCAD) began mailing 2009 residential value notices on March 20. Out of 860,000 homes on which valuation was complete on March 20, only 16% were showing an increase in their January 1 market value. Of the remainder, 45% had a reduction in market value and 39% had the same market value as in 2008.

In many, but certainly not all residential neighborhoods in Harris County, we saw declining sales prices during the final months of 2008 and the first two months of 2009. In neighborhoods where foreclosures had become the predominant sales type, considerable weight was placed on foreclosure sales as an indicator of market value.

However, in neighborhoods where few if any foreclosures have occurred, foreclosure sales are not considered to be indicative of the market and their consideration, in such instances, is disallowed by Texas law.

The greatest impact of foreclosures, and the largest number of decreases in the January 1, 2009, market value, occurred in neighborhoods with homes in the $100,000 and under price range. Overall, homes valued at $250,000 or less experienced the highest percentage of actual value reductions, while neighborhoods with homes valued at $500,000 or more received the highest percentage of actual value increases.

There are about 140,000 homes on which 2009 valuation isn’t yet complete. This includes homes with new construction as of January 1 and about 55,000 that sustained varying levels of damage during Hurricane Ike.

Value notices on the majority of these remaining residential properties, as well as for commercial and industrial real property, will be mailed beginning in April. Because business owners have until April 15 to file annual renditions on their personal property assets such as inventory and equipment, business personal property notices won’t be mailed until around June 1.

2009 values will appear on our website at the same time we generate notices of appraised values on those particular properties.

The property tax is the primary source of local government revenue in Texas and provides funding for the services provided by counties, cities, school districts, and a variety of special entities such as community colleges, port authorities, hospital and flood control districts, and municipal utility districts. While the total combined state and local tax burden in Texas is among the lowest in the nation, the portion of the tax burden borne by property taxpayers in Texas is relatively high.

Under Texas law, all real property (land, buildings, etc.) and tangible personal property used for the production of income (business inventories, equipment, etc.) is taxable at its January 1 market value unless exempt by law, or unless subject to special appraisal provisions, such as the appraisal of agricultural land at its productivity value.

Three factors determine the total amount of taxes imposed on a property. These include the appraised value established by the appraisal district for the county in which the property is located; the exemptions, if any, to which that property may be entitled, such as the homestead exemption for owner-occupied residential property; and the tax rates set by the governing bodies of the taxing units (jurisdictions) in which the property is located. The purpose of the appraisal is to allocate the tax burden fairly among all taxpayers.

For owner-occupied residential property receiving a homestead exemption, appraised value may be lower than the property’s market value because of what the law refers to as the “homestead cap.” Under current law, while a homestead property’s January 1 market value isn’t capped, that property’s appraised value is capped at a maximum increase of 10% each year. For example, the January 1 market value of a capped residence might be $200,000. However, if that home were appraised at $175,000 on January 1 of the prior year, this year’s appraised value would be $192,500 ($175,000 x 1.10). A residential property qualifies for the cap the year after the year the owner first receives his or her homestead exemption on the property. In our present economy, there are likely to be situations where the market value of a home may have decreased as of January 1, 2009, but the 2009 appraised value may still increase because it was capped last year at less than the current market value.

Normally, tax appraisals are determined as of January 1 of the year. Since none of the taxing jurisdictions in Harris County authorized a "disaster reappraisal", 2008 taxes were calculated on your property's January 1, 2008 value, even if you had damage from Hurricane Ike. However, if you still had unrepaired Ike damage on January 1, 2009, our 2009 appraisal will take that into account if we are aware of the damage. If you are in this situation, you are strongly urged to download and file a Report of Decreased Value with HCAD. The form is available on our website at http://www.hcad.org/pdf/22-03.pdf. The deadline for you to file a Report of Decreased Value is April 15, 2009.