My husband and I bought a home last year. The home had been unoccupied for over a year and the previous owners had not been keeping up with the property. Our 2009 proposed appraisal was over $25,000 more than last year's appraisal. We had done nothing except cleanup and a little painting. I protested and got the appraisal lowered. I was told by the appraisal office that "they assumed from looking at the house from the road" that we had done a lot of remodeling. Is "assuming" how they come up with their figures? Not a very accurate way of appraising if you ask me. Luckily, the protest was a smooth process for me and I am happy with the number we agreed on.

It's a joke....very unfair.

If your tax value is above market value, by all means protest.

The VCAD continues yearly to increase the value of my home taxwise by almost $10,000, but there is no way I could possibly sell it for what they say it is worth. I was told of a fellow in Woodway whose home valuation increased almost $80K this year. That is absurd. I'm sure VISD needed some monies to help with their new schools and old Joe TheTaxPayer got stuck again. It is enlightening to get on the CAD site and poke around though. Looks like to me like certain VIP's home valuations are rather low.

Of course they're unfair. A county employee values your home so that the various governmental, semi-governmental and public institutions can tax you? You don't think they're all in this together?

They only way property appraisals could be fair is if the county were to hire an independent firm to do the appraisals.

Until then, when someone needs more money, they just do a little behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing, and our property is suddenly worth more. That way, they don't have to go through the public process of hiking up the tax rates.