Cliff Booth said:

---

I've had good results with Home - Beauchamp & Associates

---

They misspelled their own company name on the "About Us" page and the new client sign up page says the agreement is for the year 2021. I'm not sure that's a ringing endorsement for their attention to detail.

Ryan the Temp said:

---

So who do y'all like and have had success with to protest your appraisals?

---

Hi

Market up 14%, appraised the full 10%, total tax up 12% (possibly more if they increase rates yet again.

This after a 19% increase in my tax bill last year due to the combined 10% appraised value increase and the tax rate increase.

The fact that they can raise both the taxable value and the rate is BS. The whole 10% cap is an optical illusion. They are already increasing their revenue substantially with the across the board value increases. Don't tell me things cost more, you already gained that inflationary bump in tax collections with the tax basis increase. To add additional tax rate on top of that is just stealing our money even more than they already were.

I'm a 1st time homeowner with a brand new build in 77009 (gentrified area). Got my first evaluation this week and the evaluation is lower than what I paid for the house by >10k. Guessing this is a good thing since my taxes will be lower?

Your neighbors' market values are all publicly available on the HCAD website. You can ask them, but you don't have to.

As another poster said, if you do the online protest (called iSettle), you would just list the addresses of the properties that are the same or almost the same as yours and point out that their market values are less than yours (if this is in fact the case). State that it's new construction, the houses are identical, and that your property should be valued the same/similarly as all the others.

Do not under any circumstances tell them what you actually paid (there is a place on the protest form to do this, in the event your house is valued for more than you paid).

In my protest and appeal experience, if your house was listed for sale on the MLS, there is a good chance HCAD already knows exactly what you and your neighbors paid. But the online protest is easy and probably still worth a shot, if you can make a case for unequal value.

Others here can comment if their value was ever increased after protesting. I've never had that experience, but I've only protested about half a dozen times. Worst that happened was they rejected my online attempt, kept the value the same, and I appealed the decision (and got it lowered).