Appraiser: Higher assessments unlikely to balloon taxes
TEXARKANA — Many Bowie County homeowners received something unexpected in this year’s appraisal, an increase in property values — but the higher values will not automatically bring a substantially larger tax bill.
Property tax increases are limited by law, Bowie County Chief Appraiser Mike Brower said.
“What the (taxing) jurisdictions are required to do by law is, they have to say, last year, the preceding year, we brought in this much money in taxes. We have a new value for the jurisdiction, which is this and what would our tax rate have to be to bring in the same amount of money as we brought in last year. That’s their starting point,” he said
Following that calculation, Brower said the taxing bodies can only raise taxes by up to 3.5% a year.
“So if your tax value goes up 20% in a year, your taxes are not going to go up $800 a year, or $900 a year,” he said. “They may go up $100 to $200 a year, depending on the house, and how much it is worth.”
Arkansas takes a different approach. Counties in the natural state are appraised every five years with the most recent appraisal occurring in 2020. Miller County Assessor Nancy Herron said appraised home values rose on average by 25% during the last cycle.
Total Assessment Solutions Co. is the organization Miller County contracts with for appraisals. Local manager Troy Gammons said during the 2025 cycle, values will be based on home sales in 2023 and 2024.
The Association of Texas Realtors’ Data Relevance Project showed the average taxable price of homes in Bowie County rose by 20% in 2022. Home values in Titus and Red River counties rose by 22% and 18%, respectively. Larger metropolitan counties such as Dallas and El Paso saw respective increases of 21% and 23%.
“They’re seeing it (value increases) all over Texas,” Bowie County Appraisal Supervisor Ronny Bailey said. “So while in some counties we were getting 20%, when we looked at our data we found some counties that are up as much as 40%.”
Additionally, homeowners have multiple opportunities to lower their taxable val
ues, according to Brower. Homestead exemptions also stipulate only 10% of the increased assessed value can be taxed in a given year, he said. Following Saturday’s bond election in Pleasant Grove Independent School District, homeowners in the district may be able to lower the taxable valuable of their property by up to $40,000.
“If we raise your value 20%, then this year it is only going to go up 10%,” Brower said. “Then next year, if we don’t do anything, if we left everything alone, it would go up another 10% by itself to catch up to market value. So it’ll pick up that 20%, it just takes two years to do it.”
The increase of cost of goods, rising home values and general inflation have created a storm of price valuation oddities in the last year, Brower said. But these variables have started to regulate.
“Real sales are always in the mix,” he said. “That’s what we have to work with, the sales data. We have to do what the market tells us to do. If the market tells us we’ve got to go up like this year, then we have to go up. If the market says it’s trying to go down like it did in 2000, we do that too.”
With the recent Federal Reserve interest rate increase and predicted future increases, Brower said he believes the market for home sales will cool, ultimately leading to a normalization of property appreciation.
“I think we’ve seen the bulk of the rise already,” he said. “Do I think they will see another 20% next year? I don’t think so. I think what you’ll see is, we’ll go back to normal, or we might have even a slight drop, maybe a 5% downturn by the end of the year.”
But for those who still think their home values are too high, Brower said his office is open to looking at and possibly reassessing the value, another avenue for homeowners to lower their assessed tax.
“If you look at your value, and you honestly don’t think your house is worth what we have on it, then you need to come in and visit with an appraiser, or you can file a formal protest,” he said.