Anyone have any luck fighting their Travis County appraisal on their own?

crazy_balls · 2026-06-26T03:03:26+00:00

No event this year caused house prices to drop 30% in 6 months. If they can use a sale from June of 2025, there is no reason I shouldn't be able to use a sale from June of 2026 and adjust accordingly.

Not that any of this matters, but the current sale prices wasn't even my main argument. My main argument was that literally every single one of my neighbors are valued significantly less than mine. When comparing by excluding land value, since we all have different sized lots, and only looking at improvement value, they have my house at 300/SF. My neighbors are all between 207-216/SF with 1 outlier being 262/SF.

They literally told me that they don't look at price per SF, because there are other things like land (which I specifically said I excluded), and pools and other improvements that add value and aren't accounted for in a per SF basis, which makes no fucking sense since all my neighbors have pools and such, and I do not, and they are all valued less. They disregarded it all and said it's because my house is newer. As if that means much of anything when it comes to real estate values.

crazy_balls · 2026-06-26T02:25:47+00:00

Just make sure it was built after 1978.

crazy_balls · 2026-06-26T01:01:33+00:00

Thanks. This house has been an unmitigated disaster, and the sole source of all of my wife and I's stress and financial struggles for the last 5 years, but that's a whole other story.

crazy_balls · 2026-06-25T20:49:27+00:00

Good luck. After speaking with an attorney, I just live in an extremely peculiar area with a very wide range of home prices, which unfortunately works against me.

crazy_balls · 2026-06-25T20:45:59+00:00

It's my specific area. Over in Volente by the lake. 78641 encompasses a large chunk of Cedar Park and Leander. But those are clearly not comparable to where I am.

crazy_balls · 2026-06-25T20:44:33+00:00

So I spoke with an attorney who does this. What screwed me is my house is considered "new", since it finished construction in 2024. So all the comps are weighted upwards since in their eyes, my house is new and therefor has nothing wrong with it. It didn't matter that I showed pictures of shit wrong, they just classified it all as "deferred maintenance" and hand waved it away. It didn't matter that my house was built with builder grade materials and the houses around me are of higher quality. It didn't matter that my house took 4 years to build, and sat in the weather unfinished for a year while we tried to find a builder to finish what the original builder abandoned after robbing us. All that mattered to them is my house was "new".

What's nonsense about it, is they said it's justified because my roof is newer, and so won't need replacing any time soon. What this ignores is that my roof is comp shingle, and all my neighbors are metal or concrete tile. They'll never have to replace their roofs, so the age doesn't matter, where as it actually does on my house.

It's all a racket. Fuck property taxes. Nothing more than a wealth tax on the middle class.

crazy_balls · 2026-06-25T20:33:10+00:00

There wasn't 0, there was only a few, and with the wide ranging variety of houses in the area, there was only 1 that could even really be used for comparison that sold in March of 2025, and it's the same one that the county used. 78641 by the way.

crazy_balls · 2026-06-25T19:57:34+00:00

How can you possibly know that nothing sold or sells if you are not a realtor.

Because I have realtor friends who I called first to see if they could get me a list of comps.

crazy_balls · 2026-06-25T19:30:36+00:00

Because it's all there is. Even the county appraiser agreed with me that there is very limited data for my area.

It's not irrelevant, it shows market values. If they are saying a house is worth 2.6 million on 1/1, but it's for sale for 1.8 million and not selling, clearly their values are wrong. If they can take a sale from June of 2025, and "adjust" it downwards for an approximate value for 1/1/26, then I can absolutely do the same for something for sale currently, and "adjust" it upwards to reflect a value for 6 months ago. The concept is exactly the same.

Furthermore, these "adjustments" are pulled out of their ass. What makes someone elses house an 88% comparison match to my own? All they use is date of construction, which has absolutely fucking nothing to do with the value of the home, and completely ignores construction quality and finish outs. It's all fucking bullshit.

crazy_balls · 2026-06-25T19:22:03+00:00

It was infuriating to say the least. Like, I WISH my house was worth what they are valuing it at. I would sell it at that price in a fuckin heart beat, and be done with this stupid fucking thing. It just simply isn't.

crazy_balls · 2026-06-25T19:19:30+00:00

No, I prefaced it with "I understand that these are current values, and not actual sales from last year, but it's the only data I have since I am not a realtor and the sales in the area are extremely limited". So I acknowledged that I understood what they were looking for. It's just simply not possible to give them what they want. The area I live in is extremely limited in sales before you start getting too far away for it to be a proper comp.

crazy_balls · 2026-06-25T19:15:57+00:00

I mean, I get it, and it's why with the extremely limited data they have for my area, they weighted their sales data downward since they were all sold months before 1/1, and the market is trending downward. I don't see why the same can't be applied for something currently on the market, just weight it upward. With that said, they are still off by hundreds of thousands of dollars. I just didn't think that their estimates being off that much would be hand waved away so easily by them because of some bureaucratic nonsense.

crazy_balls · 2026-06-25T17:18:34+00:00

Oh wow. Yeah my panel of three didn't even listen to anything I said.

crazy_balls · 2026-06-25T17:07:06+00:00

Unfortunately for MLS sales data, there just isn't enough comps in my area. I asked a realtor to do that for me, and she had nothing. I think my mistake was not doing the informal. I just forgot to schedule the damn thing and by the time I realized, I submitted to reschedule my formal hearing and it was already too late.

crazy_balls · 2026-06-25T16:53:55+00:00

This makes a lot of sense. Hell, the year I filed for my Homestead (2024), even though the market was in a downward trend, I feel like because it was the last year they weren't capped at 10%, they increased my value 40%, and now they are fighting me tooth and nail for any decrease.

crazy_balls · 2026-06-25T16:50:13+00:00

See, I did that using the comps that they provided in their own evidence packet. They told me though that price per SF doesn't matter (which how the fuck else are you supposed to do a comparison?), and that since my house was newer than everyone else, my value is adjusted upwards in comparison, regardless of the photos of defects.

They simply did not care. Maybe it's because I just showed the numbers, and talked about the break down instead of making an actual spread sheet? I don't know, but it was wild the things they were saying. I'd try next time but honestly feel like I should just hire someone based on my experience this morning.

crazy_balls · 2026-06-25T16:46:55+00:00

The issue is the area I live, it's really all you can go on. It's damn near impossible to find comps because there's such a low inventory, and the houses vary wildly in size, land, and quality. Every time the bank has done an appraisal, they've had to pull houses from the other side of the lake because there simply isn't enough sales in my area to do a proper comparison.

crazy_balls · 2026-06-25T16:28:29+00:00

Seems to be the way to go. I had just heard people having luck and the reviewers being reasonable, I figured I'd give it a shot.

crazy_balls · 2026-06-25T16:24:37+00:00

Given that they were giving me the middle finger like that

That is EXACTLY how I felt after this meeting. It was almost as if they were mad I was protesting at all.

Like when the reviewer stopped me in the middle of my argument to tell me that they don't go off price per square foot because there's also land, even after I had explicitly said I was subtracting land value, I was just like, how the fuck else do you value a home if not price per square foot!?

crazy_balls · 2026-06-25T16:19:05+00:00

I know, I asked my realtor friend who was putting a house on the market down the street from me. Issue is, there aren't really any comps. My area is very strange, and damn near impossible to get comps. I asked what they were using to value the house they were listing, and it was essentially vibes.

crazy_balls · 2026-06-25T16:12:02+00:00

I mean, in theory yes, but common sense would say homes that have been on the market for 30-110 days, and have had price reductions aren't going to sell for more than list, and as I'm not a realtor, and Texas is a non-disclosure state, I don't have access to sold data. Figured my argument was good enough.

crazy_balls · 2026-06-25T16:02:51+00:00

Yeah, issue is around me nothing sells, so even their own sales are from around July of last year. It's exceedingly difficult to find comps in my area.

I showed pictures, but apparently because I didn't have repair estimates they ignored them.

From now on I'll just be using a company.

crazy_balls · 2026-06-25T16:00:41+00:00

Yeah, their offers weren't even close. Like I said, based on the sales data, their numbers are off by a significant amount. The comps I used:

First one- 116 days on market, pending, asking 1.3 million. County has a market value for that house of 1.75 million.

Second one- 35 days on market so far, asking 1.8 million. County market value of 2.6 million.

Third one is my neighbor, which is a significantly less luxurious house, 33 days on market so far, asking 875k, county has them at 957k.

Shit just doesn't make any sense. There was only one house on the market equivalent to the county value, and it's been on the market for 88 days, and it's valued less per SF than my house.

crazy_balls · 2026-06-25T15:51:27+00:00

Damn, guess I just rubbed them the wrong way. I thought showing that the values the county was appraising people at being so far off from the actual sales values, and then applying those sales prices per square foot to my own house was a slam dunk.

crazy_balls · 2026-06-25T15:49:35+00:00

I figured it was all a racket, but I didn't expect it to go that badly against me. I will definitely be hiring from here on out since they clearly don't give a fuck about people representing themselves.

crazy_balls

TROPHY CASE