Most El Paso property owners have received their appraisal notices in the mail, kicking off the race to May 15 – the deadline to protest the taxable values of their homes and businesses.
“You need to check those notices,” said Dinah Kilgore, executive director of the El Paso Central Appraisal District. “If you have problems reading them, give us a call. We’ll help you understand it.”
The appraisal district’s annual valuations, along with tax rates, determine how much property owners will owe in taxes on an estimated 450,000 parcels of taxable land in the city and county. Because Texas has no state income tax, the multitude of local taxing entities – including school, utility and hospital districts, as well as the county’s small towns and cities – rely heavily on property taxes to fund public services.
As home prices have risen in recent years, property taxes have followed, leading to a spike in the number of challenges to the appraisal district’s official valuations. Before the COVID-19 pandemic led to soaring home production costs, the appraisal district typically had about 20,000 protests each year. But now, with property owners riled by the increasing valuations, the agency handles about 46,000 protests annually, Kilgore said.
“Home values have gone up, and we have not seen them go back down,” she said.
As the agency’s director since 2010, Kilgore is familiar with the pitfalls that keep many El Pasoans from using the available tools to lower their tax burden. Besides missing the protest deadline, she said some homeowners are not tapping into the available exemptions.
An exemption reduces a portion of the taxable value of your property, which lowers your taxes. For example, if a home is appraised at $100,000 and $20,000 in exemptions are applied, a homeowner is only responsible for paying taxes on $80,000 of the appraisal.
With more than 50 possible exemptions, Kilgore said it’s important for homeowners to review each one. The exemptions are listed on the appraisal district’s website, epcad.org. The most common is the homestead exemption, which provides a $140,000 exemption on the taxable value for most area school districts.
With the homestead exemption applied, the taxable value of a homeowner’s residence cannot increase by more than 10% from one year to the next, regardless of how much the market value rises.
More than 40 taxing entities are within El Paso County, each with its own tax rate. The county tax rate is 45.8 cents per $100 in assessed value, and the city’s rate is 75.9 cents.
Appraisals are sometimes inaccurate
Although tax rates may change, one of the biggest factors affecting property tax bills is the market value of the property. The appraisal district uses mass appraisals of neighborhoods to estimate individual valuations, a process that can sometimes miss details.
“We’re not infallible,” Kilgore said. “We try to be as accurate as we can, and we try to be as fair and equal as we can, but if we miss something, then bring it to our attention so that we can look at it and see if it needs to be adjusted.”
She explained that it is financially impossible to conduct individual assessments of hundreds of thousands of El Paso County parcels, and encourages property owners to consult with property tax experts who may be able to provide evidence that supports a lower valuation.
The Greater El Paso Association of Realtors has launched a public campaign to provide that service. Armed with sales price data from the Multiple Listing Service – a comprehensive home sales database compiled by real estate professionals – the association is offering homeowners data to help determine whether their property’s appraised value reflects the local market.
“The appraisal district does not have access to our MLS,” said Tony Delgado, CEO of the Greater El Paso Association of Realtors and MLS. “We are very committed to accuracy and verified sales. The source of our MLS are the actual brokers that are entering the information into our system, from people that are actually closing the transactions.”
Delgado, a former appraisal district employee and tax adviser for 20 years, said one of the best ways to challenge an appraisal is to show the appraisal district a report from the association of comparable home sales in your area.
“That’s good evidence to show that they have appraised you too high,” he said, but cautioned that if the independent analysis shows your property actually has a higher market valuation than the appraisal district’s assessment, “then that’s stuff that you don’t want to share.”
The appraisal district is audited by the Texas comptroller’s office every other year to ensure that its valuations are within 95% of market values. To adhere to the requirements, Kilgore said the appraisal district surveys neighborhoods and consults with finance and mortgage companies to estimate sales figures for comparable homes.
The district also uses aerial imagery and “boots on the ground” for general inspections of neighborhoods every three years. For new subdivisions, appraisers evaluate factors such as construction type and building materials.
“Say it’s a new neighborhood that’s going in in the Northeast, we’ll look at the type of construction. How is it being constructed? Is it metal framing? Is it wood framing? We have guidelines that we go by,” she said.
In addition to square footage, the district also looks at details like plumbing quality – copper or plastic – as well as the type of air conditioning, whether there’s a swimming pool, the rules of homeowners associations and zoning issues.
For existing homes, appraisers also look for issues that would affect the neighborhood market, things like crumbling foundations and stucco.
Delgado said the causes of home market fluctuation are often misunderstood by the public, with many people blaming the appraisal district or Realtors for the increasing prices of homes.
“The reality is the only one that increases the price of homes is the people who are actually buying or selling the property,” he said. “What is a seller willing to sell the property for, and what is a willing buyer willing to pay for it? That’s what really sets the market.”
He said there have been fewer homes on the market in recent years, which forced prices up, but the trend has shifted, with home inventories slowly growing.
“Now we are switching into more of a buyer’s market,” Delgado said.
Public concerns with valuations
Even if property tax rates are reduced, as was done recently by the city of El Paso, rising home values can still drive up property tax bills. In a low-income region like El Paso, this is keeping some people out of homeownership, some real estate experts say.
“It’s so unaffordable. We are taxing homeowners out of their homes,” said Isabel Veronica Chacon, an El Paso Realtor and a member of the Governmental Affairs Committee of the Greater El Paso Association of Realtors since 2018. “We can’t fight valuations because, unfortunately, everything is going up.”
Among the best ways homeowners can lower their tax burden are the exemptions, primarily the homestead exemption, said Chacon, who is also the liaison between the Texas Realtors Political Involvement Committee and local elected officials.
She emphasized that if more people protest their home valuations, the more likely it is to set a collective, downward trend for property taxes, which are largely assessed by comparing the market prices of similar homes in a neighborhood.
“If you are overpaying, then you’re making everybody else overpay too,” she said. “So the more of us who protest, the more we take care of each other.”
Despite the tools available to lower the taxable portion of home values, many people are not protesting their valuations.
A March 2026 study on Texas homeowner attitudes found that 9 in 10 respondents “worry about property tax affordability” but most – 74% – have never contested their valuations.
That rings true for Rodolfo Montoya, a real estate agent with Montoya Real Estate Group LLC.
“Many people receive their home valuations, and they think they are high. I’ve been making calls and asking them to protest their taxes, but they don’t do anything about it,” said Montoya, who has been in the business for 22 years.
“If you’re not happy with your value, protest,” he added. “It’s your right under Texas law. And now’s the time to do it.”
El Paso home valuations, by the numbers
According to information provided by the Greater El Paso Association of Realtors, the largest jump in median home sales prices was in Far East El Paso, which experienced an 11.2% jump from $205,000 in 2025 to $228,000 in 2026. This included the 79836 and 79849 ZIP codes.
Central El Paso saw a 6.2% increase, from $190,000 in 2025 to $201,725 in 2026. The Upper Valley ZIP codes of 79922 and 79932 saw a 4.2% increase, from a median sales price of $355,000 in 2025 to $369,990 this year. The Westside ZIP codes of 79911 and 79912 had a modest jump from $375,000 to $379,900.
A cluster of ZIP codes from the Lower Valley saw a significant 7.3% decrease during that same time, dropping from a median sales price of $205,000 to $190,050. That area is the only region in El Paso County that saw a decrease in home sales prices.
Property tax experts said the rise and drop in prices is simply following market trends affected by a range of factors – notably property disrepair, upgrades and spikes in COVID production costs – and the varying desirability of different parts of town.
The average assessed valuations – before any caps or exemptions – of single-family homes in the city of El Paso have increased steadily over the past decade, according to data from the El Paso Central Appraisal District.