Own a lot in Comal county. CAD value went from 50,700 in 2021 to 126,400 this year. I paid $125k for it closing in January of this year. So clearly I can send in my closing papers and they can drop it to $125, but I would like to try to push for lower. They have lots on my same street of the same size appraised from as low as $101 and up to $130. I can find comps that sold in last six months that sold ranging from $70k to $150k. So how would you approach the protest? Or do I really have nothing to stand on since I paid $125 so recently.

I'll at the very least submit for the $125 just bc I hate the whole property tax concept and just so they have to deal with me. I protest my home every year. Always get something adjusted.

Don't use your sales data. Use other lower comps and highlight negative aspects of your lot compared to those.

Years ago when we tried to lower our property, Dallas asked for our closing statement since we had recently purchased it. The valuation was still less than what we'd paid, so we went with what they had.

Maybe I'm crazy but you just paid market for the lot and now want them to devalue that same lot? You set the value based on what you paid. That's it's value.

I closed AFTER January 1st. They are supposed to value it on January 1st. Technically at that time, they didnt have my sales price. Ultimately I agree the value at 125 makes sense (assuming they bring it down to $125). That doesnt mean Im not going to do everything I can to fight paying extra taxes. And Im fighting the unfairness of the valuation compared to the lot across the street from me with similar features and exact same size that they value at 101k.

Sometimes going in can really backfire.

Example: We have a 4-plex. It generally goes up some every year & still hadn't hit what we'd paid for it back in 2015. This year it went up $12K and we felt it was getting ridiculous.

We did our homework & put together a bound booklet of all other multi-families of a similar size. There is one that is amazingly similar - exact same sq footage, same age, same use, etc - that was over $100K less & had not had a raise in 10+ years. None of the others had yearly increases & we felt signaled out.

We went for an informal discussion with the appraiser & they said, leave it with us & we'll get back to you. About 2 weeks later we got a revised appraisal from them & they took it up another $12K. The explanation was that they now are moving to "income based" evaluation using the State's formulas. The commercial appraiser said if we brought in all of our numbers (rent, vacancies, maintenance costs, etc. on this property) that he would bring it down to our numbers. We declined but ran those numbers using the State's formula & even with the latest increase, we are still valued at less that we would be. That said, I would not sell that property for the value the CAD has or even the State's numbers. It is still under valued, IMO.

All other multi-families (not just the ones we used) got a shock this year though - my apologies if you are one of them.

Might not be a good time to poke the bear again, but we are going to really look at all of our properties once we get the sheets. Looks like our little office building has almost doubled in appraised value. We plan to look at every similar building in the neighborhood. Again, sorry if you are one of them.