The argument against getting rid of yearly property appraisals

As the governor pushes to end annual property appraisals, some say Tarrant County’s experiment with that is a cautionary tale.

DALLAS — For the past decade or so, I have been touching base with real estate broker and prolific property appraisal protest helper Chandler Crouch. After all these years, Crouch just managed to surprise me.

We recently talked and he had this advice for homeowners getting their property appraisals: “The thing that you can do as a homeowner is to protest”. I expected him to say that because every year, he helps thousands of homeowners protest their values when their appraisals come in too high.

But now he’s helping Tarrant homeowners challenge home appraisals that didn’t go up, but that have simply been frozen at the same amount for the past couple of years. 

“When you start doing the math, and you look a little below the surface, you find out what looks good on the surface…actually ends up hurting a lot of people.”

In late 2024, the Tarrant Appraisal District decided that existing homes without new improvements would be appraised once every two years instead of every year. They froze home values where they were and set the next appraisal for 2027. So, your value from last year may well be your value again this year.

That might feel good if your home had otherwise gone up significantly in value in this year’s appraisal. That’s because with your appraisal frozen, your property taxes would be lower because they would be based on that lower, frozen valuation.

But Crouch crunched the numbers from the first year of this. He found that most Tarrant homeowners—including him—were in the group that benefited from this setup last year.

But he found that more than 190,000 of them were disadvantaged; that in a not-so-hot real estate market, their appraisals should have gone down. But because they didn’t get a yearly re-evaluation, their property appraisals couldn’t go down and instead stayed frozen at a value that was too high, which would have made their property taxes too high, too.

Crouch says the benefits of the changed system disproportionately went to homeowners in higher valued homes and that the disadvantages were more likely to impact people whose homes with relatively lower values. 

“We can draw a pretty clean line at $500,000. If your home value is below $500,000, somewhere around 80% of those homes ended up paying more than they probably should have. And above that, they’re paying a lot less.”

Independent of Crouch’s analysis, the Tarrant Appraisal District says it’s doing its “own review of the overall process” and expects to share results soon. Crouch says it’s too late, though. He warns that on top of the more than 190,000 homeowners whose taxable values should’ve–but didn’t—go down last year, there are a lot of homeowners again this year who are about to get appraisals that should’ve gone down but are still frozen at too-high values, “Well over 100,000 people…about a third of people are getting ripped off by this.”

He implores those Tarrant homeowners to protest their appraisals. Crouch created this tool so Tarrant homeowners can check whether their home’s value may have been frozen too high. If you plan to protest, remember that you only have a limited time to do so.

That is an important reminder, especially if you are in a more modest home in Tarrant County.

Crouch says you may not be getting the mailbox full of reminders and offers from professional protest services because they are much more likely to focus their outreach on higher-dollar homes.

“They get paid as a percentage of how much they save people. So, the bigger the price tag, the more money they make. So, they dump all their marketing dollars on the higher-end homes. And it just alerts everybody: Hey, it’s time to go protest. Meanwhile, the lower-end homes are getting overvalued, and to boot, they’re not getting all of the same advertisements. So, they’re not alerted to the same level that the other guys are.”

Speaking for herself and not the board, TAD Board Member Gloria Pena says she has asked the district to review Crouch’s figures. She thinks they are overstated, but adds, “Even if there were only 100 properties (valued too high because of the freeze), it still matters.”

Pena points out that she voted against the plan to freeze values in 2024, “In my opinion, we should not have had a freeze. I recommend that property owners protest annually online at the TAD website or in person at the TAD office.”

Going forward, she says the best solution is to “allow the Chief Appraiser to do his job and provide new assessments EVERY year to the property owners.”

TAD Board Member Eric Crile, also speaking for himself and not the board, says it’s not fair to put the burden on homeowners to protest values that are incorrect simply because they have been frozen by the appraisal district. 

“I don’t believe so…the district should be doing its job of appraising property. And so, when you go to this every two-year method, we are asking more of our citizens.”

Crile also has concerns about detrimental impacts on some school districts in Tarrant County, whose state funding could eventually be put in jeopardy simply because home values in their school districts were frozen by the appraisal district.

Crouch says it is important for all Texas homeowners and central appraisal districts to pay attention to what has happened in Tarrant County, especially since Governor Abbott has been touting the idea of getting rid of annual appraisals statewide.

Crouch says he approached the governor about that at a recent North Texas event, “He came to town and he was just doing a photo shoot. And I tapped him on the shoulder, and I said, sir, I’ve got to ask you about this plan.”

For more of that conversation, you can listen here to our full Y’all-itics podcast with Chandler Crouch and Eric Crile.