Austin property appraisal / assessment question... (sales, 2014, insurance)

[FrozenCucumber]

I bought a property March 2013, for say $200K. The 2012 assessed value was say, $140K. I received my assessment for 2013 which is, say, $160K.

Did I dodge the tax man in 2013? Or will final tax bill for 2013 be higher? And what are implications for 2014? Was March 2013 too late to be caught for 2013, but it 100% will be caught for 2014?

Any advice/thoughts? Thank you

[EzPeterson]

Originally Posted by FrozenCucumber

I bought a property March 2013, for say $200K. The 2012 assessed value was say, $140K. I received my assessment for 2013 which is, say, $160K.

Did I dodge the tax man in 2013? Or will final tax bill for 2013 be higher? And what are implications for 2014? Was March 2013 too late to be caught for 2013, but it 100% will be caught for 2014?

Any advice/thoughts? Thank you

Assessments, Apprasals and sales prices have nothing to do with one another.

Could go up, could go down. Might not change at all.

[atxcio]

Make sure you get that homestead exemption. You can apply for it after Jan 1, 2014. Once you have that, they can't actually assess you on anything more than a 10% increase on your prior year's value (although they can appraise higher, your taxes will be capped at the 10% increase max). Since they didn't jump between the prior owner and you, they will have lost their chance once you have the HS exemption in place.

But yeah, your 2013 taxes won't be on any more than $160K. They won't change the appraised value, unless you filed a protest (wouldn't be wise in this situation, obviously).

[FrozenCucumber]

So if I understand correctly -- the city does not have access to MLS transactions? They assess your properties independently... if the assessed value is too high, then you can use your purchase transaction to lower the assessed value? So purchase values only work in one direction?

Thanks

[scm53]

Originally Posted by FrozenCucumber

So if I understand correctly -- the city does not have access to MLS transactions? They assess your properties independently... if the assessed value is too high, then you can use your purchase transaction to lower the assessed value? So purchase values only work in one direction?

Thanks

#1 - in Texas, cities don't do appraisals. There is a central appraisal district that does it for all taxing authorities in a county.

#2 - Texas is a non-disclosure state. No one knows what your property sold for. Your mortgage is public record, but it is only tangentially related. So for 2013, you are set. But there is nothing to prevent it from going to $200K next year.

[atxcio]

Originally Posted by FrozenCucumber

So if I understand correctly -- the city does not have access to MLS transactions? They assess your properties independently... if the assessed value is too high, then you can use your purchase transaction to lower the assessed value? So purchase values only work in one direction?

Basically, that is correct (except the city part, as stated above). I suppose it could work both ways but no one would bring in their purchase documentation to get a higher appraisal. The appraisal district doesn't have access to the MLS, but they do send a questionnaire out sometimes asking sales price (you don't need to fill it out and return it).

[janejanejanejanejane]

Originally Posted by scm53

#1 - in Texas, cities don't do appraisals. There is a central appraisal district that does it for all taxing authorities in a county.

#2 - Texas is a non-disclosure state. No one knows what your property sold for. Your mortgage is public record, but it is only tangentially related. So for 2013, you are set. But there is nothing to prevent it from going to $200K next year.

They TCAD will absolutely know what a house sold for. If you ask a realtor, they can tell you what any given house sold for.

TCAD is doing a near-decent job appraising houses for close to market value. There (at least in our area) is a small to no gap now between the appraisal and selling price or possible selling price. Is there a chance you overpaid OP? Does not matter anyway...

[Trainwreck20]

They TCAD will absolutely know what a house sold for.

Actually, no, the MLS explicitly prohibits use for taxing purposes and TCAD is too high profile to get away stealing that information. OTOH, if you protest, you CAN bring in sales data from the MLS (for your house or other houses) for comps. TCAD then takes all that data and puts it in their database.

[CarnivalGal]

Originally Posted by janejanejanejanejane

They TCAD will absolutely know what a house sold for. If you ask a realtor, they can tell you what any given house sold for.

TCAD is doing a near-decent job appraising houses for close to market value. There (at least in our area) is a small to no gap now between the appraisal and selling price or possible selling price. Is there a chance you overpaid OP? Does not matter anyway...

Depends on where you live, I guess. Ours went from ridiculously over-valued by TCAD 5 years ago (got it lowered by $30,000 or about 10%), to actually under-valued now. A neighbor's house was valued for 2013 at $318,322. It went under contract last month and sold for $390,000 after only 2 days on the market. Ours was valued by TCAD this year at $300,968. An independent appraisal in March (for insurance purposes) valued it at $372,000.

I'm not complaining, since my taxes went down this year. But it really makes me think that TCAD just pulls numbers out of their you-know-what.

[crust-n-patti]

I used to live there (for 22 years) and went through it several times .... I finally got what I considered to be a reasonable explanation. The have a computer model that takes into account the 50 (or so) most appropriate properties to the one that is being appraised. Based on that it computes the values that it uses. For some properties it works and others are more challenging. In my case (great hills and far west) the prices were all over the map. So I protested a few times and usually came out on top.

OP: They will likely adjust it for 2014 since the house sold in 2013 ... they know the house sold and they have vast knowledge of mortgage LTV approximations. Secondly, if they overestimate, you can protest, if they go under, they really just lose out.