By hiring us as your agent, we will conduct a comprehensive analysis on your property in order to convincingly argue for a lower value.  A lower value means you will pay less in taxes in January.

No.  The value that the Appraisal District sets on your property is for taxing purposes only.  It is not meant to reflect the value of your property if you were to put it on the open market today.  While the Appraisal District tries its best to set the right value, the system it uses to set values is inherently flawed which is why properties typically do not sell for the value set by the Appraisal District.

The system is called “Mass Appraisal”.  Harris County has over 1.4 million real properties.  It would be impossible to appraise each property individually every year so more often than not appraisals are done across the board by neighborhood and not individually.  In addition, the Appraisal District is a government entity and therefore is not allowed to access the interior of your property without permission.  These are the 2 main reasons why we believe every property has a chance for a reduction.

Residential:  In a neighborhood like Bellaire the original homes were built in the 1940s.  The Appraisal District likes to use recent comparable sales to come up with values.  The problem is that a lot of the original homes that sold were remodeled or upgraded in some way.  Therefore they sold for more than if a house was not remodeled.  So they use the Price Per Square Foot of the sold homes to come up with a new value for YOUR home.  But they do this without knowing for sure whether or not your home or the sold home has been remodeled because they have no access to the interior.  So in some cases homeowners are paying higher taxes for upgrades that don’t exist.

Commercial:  In office-warehouse properties, the more office you have the more valuable the building is because it has more improvements and you can charge higher rents than if the building was mostly warehouse.  The Appraisal District frequently uses one of three approaches in commercial: sales, cost or income.  If they use cost well then there is a discrepancy because they don’t know what your office to warehouse ratio is when the building was built unless they have walked the interior of the building.  If they use sales well what if the sales comparables they use are 90% office and your property is only 10% office?  That would mean you’re paying higher taxes for improvements that you don’t have.  If they use income the Appraisal District will guesstimate your office to warehouse ratio, guesstimate the rents you may or may not be receiving, guesstimate the occupancy rate and then finally guesstimate your expenses unless you provide other information.  That’s a lot of guessing. 

Business Personal Property:  With regards to restaurant businesses, we frequently represent restaurant operators as brokers in order to find them new locations and negotiate their leases.  Because of the tremendous expense of opening a new location, our clients frequently purchase used kitchen equipment at auctions to save money and because new kitchen equipment depreciates significantly after the purchase.  But when the Appraisal District finds out that you have opened a “new” location can you guess what they assume because they can’t access the kitchen?  They assume you have new kitchen equipment.  Is that fair to pay taxes on used equipment as if the equipment was brand new?  Nope.

Absolutely.  We would love the opportunity to help with your all your real estate needs.  After all who knows your property better than your tax consultant who has been protesting it along with other properties in the surrounding area for the last few years.

Unfortunately no.  There are no guarantees when protesting your taxes however we have a proven record of successful protests combined with our experience, education, knowledge and aggressiveness.  We truly believe we can greatly increase your chances for a reduction.  Just check out our case studies for some examples.

Call us at 281-556-8100 or email us at info@buenavistamanagement.com . We would love to hear from you.  Thank you for visiting this page on our website and we look forward to representing you.