Here's a Great Way to Provide a Community Service Homeowners Will Appreciate

Texas has no personal income tax, which makes it a great place to live, but the state has to make up that lost tax revenue somehow, and they do it with our property taxes. If you lease, you won't pay property taxes but if you own a home, you certainly will. Basically, the higher the assessed value of your home, the more you'll pay in taxes so smart homeowners pay attention to it.

Every year, every home in the state of Texas is reassessed as to its new value for the year. The tax statements come out in April and homeowners have a little over a month to protest the valuation. If they think their home has been overvalued and they're paying too much in property tax, they can fight it. The problem is, most homeowners have no idea how to do it. They don't have access to the MLS which could help them dispute their valuation. This is where you can help them.

For years, we've been offering a no strings attached, complimentary tax appraisal visit for any homeowner who wishes to take advantage of it. They don't have to be a client of ours nor do we pressure them to become one. We consider this a community service.

We spend about 15 minutes with anyone who signs up to review their tax valuation. We used to do it in person, but with covid, we had to start doing it by Zoom and that actually works out better.

All of our agents participate. We'll counsel them on how to protest and give them the best comparables to protest with. 2022 is going to be a real challenge because homes across the board in every price point are way up from last year so it's going to be difficult to find those lower sale comparables for them, but we're going to do our best.

Here's a Zoom presentation we posted to our Facebook page which explained the entire process. We followed this using Signup Genius whereby anyone who wanted to participate could select a day and time.

This is a service you should offer to the general public. It doesn't cost you anything and creates good will within your community. I would highly recommend doing it if you aren't already.