Change House Address For Tax Purposes

[heights]

In trying to prepare for this year's tax protest, I was looking up the values of various houses in the Heights and have noticed an unusual thing about two houses that sit on corner lots. The addresses of these houses appear to at one time have been on the north/south streets Harvard and Cortlandt, but now appear in HCAD on the east/west streets E 16th and E 15th. The houses still display house numbers on Harvard and Cortlandt, and the one on Cortlandt actually lists the property address on E 15th and the owner address on Cortlandt. Could this be done for tax purposes so that the houses are appraised in comparison to the (perhaps less valuable) nearby houses on the east/west streets?

The two examples I found were 207 E 16th (which sits on the NE corner of Harvard at E 16th, facing Harvard and prominently displaying the number 1602 on the front gate) and 223 E 15th (which sits on the NW corner of Cortlandt at E 15th, facing Cortlandt and prominently displaying the number 1501 on the front of the house -- this is the one that lists the owner's address as 1501 Cortlandt).

Why else would this be done if not for tax purposes? And how would one go about doing this if one lived on a corner lot?

Thanks.

[musicman]

In trying to prepare for this year's tax protest, I was looking up the values of various houses in the Heights and have noticed an unusual thing about two houses that sit on corner lots. The addresses of these houses appear to at one time have been on the north/south streets Harvard and Cortlandt, but now appear in HCAD on the east/west streets E 16th and E 15th.

what is your definition of now? looks like HCAD has had both defined that way for over 20 years. I've seen addresses change in the middle of a block before just because the mailing addresses weren't sequential.

[heights]

what is your definition of now? looks like HCAD has had both defined that way for over 20 years. I've seen addresses change in the middle of a block before just because the mailing addresses weren't sequential.

Well, I believe that 1602 Harvard used to be the address listed in HCAD about 6-7 years ago because I used to use it as comparison and that's how I recall it being listed. I don't think that the "ownership history" would necessarily be an indicator of how long that a property had been tied to a certain address because they could change the address without changing the account number (if that's what you were going by). I do see that as far back as 2005 records that are visible on HCAD they both have the east/west street addresses.

And the fence that has the big "1602" built into it was put up just before that house was on the home tour about 6-7 years ago. I see in the HHA list of deed restricted properties it is listed as 1602 Harvard and in the Houston Preservation Ordinance list it shows as "1602 Harvard (aka 207 E. 16th St) – Milroy-Muller House"

[Ross]

Addresses are generally assigned by the Post Office for the convenience of mail delivery. HCAD typically uses the legal description for determining the property location, neighborhood, etc. Physical addresses are just a means to facilitate searching for properties in the database. I doubt changing your address is going to affect the HCAD valuation/protest process. The bigger factors there seem to be the neighborhood designation and subdivision name.