Tax Protest Hearing Letter

[DrFood]

Today (Friday the 23rd) I come home and bring in the mail and what do I find, my letter from HCAD regarding my tax protest. I am nice and happy that I get to protest and exercise my right to question their over valuation. Lo and behold I open it up and find that they scheduled my informal hearing for July 19 and my board hearing for July 26. I have never done the board hearing and from everyone I have talked to who does the board does zero to change the appraisal. Plus I cannot go on the 26th because of work issues. I want to do the informal 1-1 with the appraiser.

The letter is dated July 9 which is a Friday. No idea why it came today, 2 weeks after they dated the letter, or when HCAD actually mailed it.

Has anyone ever run into this situation? If so were you able to still get the informal hearing?

Thanks for advice.

[TheNiche]

I've done property tax protesting for friends that have had situations similar to yours. In one instance, there had been a spree of mail thefts, so they were able to present police reports documenting a reasonable case for why they didn't receive the HCAD notice. In another instance, I myself had not received an HCAD notice because numbers in my street address had been transposed by HCAD's data entry person. In each case, it took a fair bit of effort with the service desk on the 2nd floor of the HCAD building to get the matters resolved, but it is by no means impossible.

All the same, I have found that the informal one-on-one hearing rarely results in a satisfactory reduction. I don't bother with them anymore and go straight to the ARB. The important thing is to present evidence of value that is of a sort acceptable to the ARB, to be familiar with the process, to abide by the rules presented on HCAD's website, and to treat them with respect. Preparation is key.

[musicman]

Today (Friday the 23rd) I come home and bring in the mail and what do I find, my letter from HCAD regarding my tax protest. I am nice and happy that I get to protest and exercise my right to question their over valuation. Lo and behold I open it up and find that they scheduled my informal hearing for July 19 and my board hearing for July 26. I have never done the board hearing and from everyone I have talked to who does the board does zero to change the appraisal. Plus I cannot go on the 26th because of work issues. I want to do the informal 1-1 with the appraiser.

The letter is dated July 9 which is a Friday. No idea why it came today, 2 weeks after they dated the letter, or when HCAD actually mailed it.

Has anyone ever run into this situation? If so were you able to still get the informal hearing?

Thanks for advice.

once the notification is received you have 30 days to respond. they are behind in the process, so you should fine just fine.

[august948]

For whatever reason, HCAD is slow this year in getting its notices out. I found out about the dates of my informal and ARB hearings first on the HCAD website while I was looking at something else. Didn't get the mail from them until 5 or 6 days before the informal. I've had pretty good results from the informal meetings (in both cases I got about a 15% drop in the appraisal). They are pretty strict about what they will allow for comps, so take care that you use ones from the same sub and tract as yours. They also have some very, very good overhead pictures of properties so they'll spot new construction in the backyard and dock you for it.