There was a new residential subdivision being developed in the Northwest Houston area.  One of our clients owned a house in this newly developed subdivision built in 2008. The builder had 4 floor plans available ranging from 1,600 (3 bedrooms) Square Feet (SF) to 2,200 SF (4 bedrooms).  Our client owned the smallest floor plan at 1,600 SF.  Unfortunately for him the Appraisal District mistakenly assessed his house as the 2,200 SF floor plan valued at $165,000 or $75 per square foot (PSF).  So he was paying taxes on 2,200 SF of house even though his house was only 1,600 SF which at $75 PSF should have been valued at $120,000.  Luckily, we caught this error and presented our case to the Appraisal Review Board (ARB) and convinced them to correct our client’s square footage and reduce his value to $120,000 which is a difference of $45,000 in taxable value x 3% (tax rate) = $1,350 in tax savings.    

Homes that were built in the 1950s and 1960s are prevalent throughout Harris County.  Many but not all of these older homes have been remodeled at some point in their lifetime.  Every year the Appraisal District uses neighborhood sales to come up with a value for these older homes.  Typically houses that sell on the open market have been remodeled in some way so that Sellers can obtain the maximum price for their home.  We had a client who came to us one year who was devastated that his taxes kept rising every year until they became almost unbearable.  He could not understand why because he had not remodeled his house since he had bought it 30 years ago.  So we looked at the pictures of the comparable sales that HCAD was using to appraise his home and noticed that all the comparables that they used had been extensively remodeled.  We presented this evidence to the Appraisal Review Board and they asked us if we had pictures of our client’s house to prove that he had not remodeled it.  We had to remind the Appraisal Review Board that homeowners are not obligated to show pictures of their house to prove that they have not remodeled it.  Rather the burden of proof to substantiate a value is on the District not the homeowner.  Stumped, the Appraisal Review Board agreed with us and lowered the value of our client’s house to the appropriate value