A notarized, independent opinion of market value as of January 1, built to meet the Tax Code conditions that shift the district's burden of proof at your hearing.
Ordinarily the appraisal district carries the burden of establishing your property's value by a preponderance of the evidence. Section 41.43 of the Tax Code raises that bar in your favor under specific conditions: if you file with the board an appraisal supporting your claimed value, on property worth one million dollars or less, the district must then establish value by clear and convincing evidence. The conditions are exact, and every one has to be met.
Under Section 41.461 you may obtain the data and information the chief appraiser plans to introduce at your hearing, at no charge, at least 14 days before it. Read that first.
It changes who has to prove what and how convincingly. It does not decide the case, and this is where marketing in my industry tends to get loose. The board remains free to weigh the evidence and find for the district. Meeting the statutory conditions puts your evidence in front of the board on stronger footing; it does not produce a result.
I will not tell you that a protest will reduce your value, that your taxes will fall, or that the board will find my report persuasive. What I can tell you is what the report will contain and that it will be prepared to the standards the statute references.
Find the Tarrant Appraisal District notice and look for the two figures on it: market value and appraised value. Those two numbers decide whether a protest can move your bill at all, and reading them takes about thirty seconds.
If you have a residence homestead exemption, Texas law caps how fast the appraised value can rise — generally to the prior year's appraised value plus ten percent, plus the value of new improvements. Your tax bill is calculated from the lower capped figure. So if your market value is 465,000 and your capped appraised value is 372,000, an appraisal has to come in below 372,000 to change anything. If the two numbers are close together, or you bought recently, or you do not have a homestead exemption on the property, you are in the group where this works.
Read those two figures off your notice and call me with them. That is the whole qualifying conversation, it takes two minutes, and it costs nothing.
Notices of appraised value for a single-family residence homestead must be delivered by April 1 or as soon after as practicable, and for other property by May 1. Tarrant County homeowners typically see theirs in the spring.
The deadline to protest is May 15 or the 30th day after the notice was delivered to you, whichever is later. File on time even if you have decided nothing else, because it costs nothing and preserves every option you have. The district then sets an informal review or an appraisal review board hearing.
If you intend to use an independent appraisal, call in April rather than the week of your hearing. The statute sets both a floor and a ceiling on timing, and an appraisal ordered too late is unusable no matter how good it is. TAD also adjusts its online filing tools and informal review options from year to year, so read the current year's notice rather than a website's account of how it used to work.
The Tax Code gives you a right most homeowners never use. Under Section 41.461, at least 14 days before your hearing the chief appraiser must deliver a copy of the appraisal review board's hearing procedures, the Comptroller's taxpayer assistance pamphlet, and notice that you may inspect and obtain a copy of the data, schedules, formulas, and all other information the chief appraiser plans to introduce at your hearing. The district may not charge you for it.
That packet is the case against you, and it is worth reading closely. It names the comparable sales the district relied on and describes how it reached your value. Sometimes it is simply wrong on the facts, which is the cheapest kind of protest to win: the record says four bedrooms and you have three, or it shows a pool you filled in. Correcting a record error does not require an appraisal from me.
There are teeth behind the rule. Section 41.67(d) provides that information the district was required to deliver and did not may not be used or offered in any form as evidence at the hearing, subject to a narrow exception for rebuttal. Request the packet in writing, early, and keep proof of when you asked.
Market value and appraised value are both on your TAD notice. If they are close together, or you bought recently, a protest has room to move your bill. Call me with both figures.
Texas appraises property for taxation as of January 1 of the tax year. That makes this a retrospective assignment: I am forming an opinion of what your home was worth on January 1, not what it is worth the day I walk through it. The comparable sales I use and the condition I consider are the ones relevant to that date.
The date matters most when something changed in between. If your foundation failed in March, that condition did not exist on January 1 and I cannot pretend it did. If it failed the previous October and was unrepaired on January 1, it is squarely relevant, and it is the kind of thing mass appraisal never sees. Deferred maintenance, an original kitchen and baths, a failing roof, functional problems, drainage, and adverse locational influences sit in the same category. A district valuing tens of thousands of homes by model cannot observe any of it, which is the honest case for an independent appraisal when one is warranted.
Bring documentation. Contractor bids, repair invoices, engineer reports, and dated photographs from around January 1 support conclusions that would otherwise rest only on my inspection months later.
I do not file protests, negotiate with the district, or appear at hearings as your representative. The report is yours to present, or your registered tax agent's.
This is a legal boundary, not a preference. Texas requires property tax consultants to register under Chapter 1152 of the Occupations Code. A licensed or certified real estate appraiser is exempt from that registration requirement only when the property tax consulting services relate to farms, ranches, or single-family residences. I therefore limit this service to single-family residences and I do not take tax protest work on other property types.
I also do not act as your agent. I will not file your protest, negotiate with the district, appear at your informal conference, or represent you at the appraisal review board hearing. You present the report yourself, or your registered tax agent does. That separation is part of why the report is worth anything: I am not a party arguing your side, I am an independent appraiser whose opinion happens to be evidence in your matter. My fee is a set amount, quoted before I begin, and does not depend on whether your value is reduced or on anything the board decides.
There are two distinct grounds for a value protest in Texas, and they call for different evidence. One is that the district's market value is too high. The other is unequal appraisal, meaning your property is appraised at a higher ratio than a reasonable and representative sample of comparable properties or than the median appraised value of a reasonable number of comparable properties appropriately adjusted.
My appraisal addresses the first. It is an opinion of market value, not a study of how your neighbors are assessed. The equity argument is built from the district's own roll data, and a registered tax consultant who runs that analysis at volume is often better equipped for it than I am. If your notice looks out of line with similar houses on your street but the district's market value seems roughly defensible, an appraisal from me is probably not your tool.
For property tax work I appraise single-family residences in Fort Worth and Tarrant County only. No commercial property, no apartment buildings, no subdivision analysis.
The fee is quoted in writing before I start (single-family starts at $600, because a January 1 effective date makes this retrospective work), based on the property's size, complexity, and location, and it includes notarization of my signature so the report meets the attestation requirement. Typical turnaround from inspection to delivered report is 5 to 7 business days. Call early in the protest season; the 180-day and 14-day windows do not move, and late in the calendar I may not be able to help at all.
Property tax protest
“I was so afraid I wouldn't be able to find an appraiser to get me information back before my hearing with the TAD, but Terrence came to my rescue. He was the only appraiser I called out of 4 that answered his phone.”Clariese Hunter · Google review
The deadline is May 15 or the 30th day after the date the appraisal district delivered your notice of appraised value, whichever is later. Notices for a single-family residence homestead are required to go out by April 1 or as soon after as practicable. File on time even if you have not gathered any evidence, because an on-time protest preserves your options and costs nothing. Confirm the current year's filing methods on your notice, since TAD changes its online tools from year to year.
Not always. You can protest with photographs, repair estimates, corrections to the district's property record, and sales information, and many protests are resolved informally before ever reaching the appraisal review board. An independent appraisal is what you want when the amount at stake is meaningful, when the property has condition or functional problems mass appraisal cannot see, and when your homestead's capped value is not already below the market value being disputed.
I cannot tell you that, and no appraiser or tax firm honestly can. The appraisal review board weighs all the evidence and may find for the district. There is also a structural reason an appraisal can fail to help even when it is accurate: if your homestead's capped appraised value is already below the market value on your notice, a lower market value does not reduce your bill unless it drops below the capped figure. Check that relationship before you order anything.
Market value is the district's estimate of what the property would sell for as of January 1. Appraised value is the figure your taxes are actually calculated from, and for a residence homestead it is limited by law to the prior year's appraised value plus ten percent plus the value of new improvements. After several years of rising markets the two can diverge substantially, and the gap is exactly why some homeowners gain nothing from a successful market value protest.
Under Section 41.43 of the Tax Code, to shift the district's burden to clear and convincing evidence the appraisal must have been performed not later than the 180th day before the first day of the hearing, and it must be delivered to the chief appraiser not later than the 14th day before the first day of the hearing. It must also be attested before an officer authorized to administer oaths and prepared by an appraiser certified under Chapter 1103 of the Occupations Code, on property valued at one million dollars or less.
No. A Texas appraiser is exempt from property tax consultant registration only for services connected with farms, ranches, or single-family residences, and even within that exemption I do not act as anyone's agent. I do not file protests, negotiate with the district, attend informal conferences, or appear before the board on your behalf. You present the appraisal yourself, or a registered tax consultant you engage does.
No. My fee is a set amount, quoted in writing before I begin, and payable regardless of what the appraisal concludes or what the board decides. Contingent pricing tied to a valuation outcome is incompatible with the standards an appraiser works under. If you want representation on a contingency basis, that is what registered property tax consultants offer, and it is a different service from mine.
For property tax work I take single-family residences only, because the Occupations Code exemption that lets an appraiser provide property tax consulting services without separate registration is limited to farms, ranches, and single-family residences. I do not appraise commercial buildings, apartment complexes, or perform subdivision analysis in any context. For those you need a certified general appraiser and, for the protest itself, a registered property tax consultant.
Written fee quote, typically within one business hour. Call early in the protest season — the 180-day and 14-day statutory windows do not move.
Would rather not type it out? Call or text (817) 903-4509.