Juice Blog
Central Austin Real EstateArchive for May, 2011
Property Tax Protesting 101
Property Tax Notices Out
It’s that time of year again! As we do every year, you’ve probably already received an appraisal update from your appraisal district on the value of your home. Appraisal notices have been mailed to 200,000 residential property owners in the county. Another 60,000 will be mailed soon. Last year, the Travis district was swamped with 94,325 protests – 50 percent more than usual – and mailed settlement offers to 21,605 homeowners, something it had not done before.
A new option for those who want to protest their taxes? You’ll now be able to handle the process online. This online option will be available for homeowners whose homes are valued at lower than $300,000 and where the neighborhood the home is in is very consistent. If you want to learn more about how to protest your taxes – read on!
Protesting Your Property Taxes
Now that you’ve received your appraisal and if you believe that your appraisal does not reflect the actual value of your property, here are some tips for how to go about challenging the appraisal.
- First, you’ll want to submit your protest by May 31st.
- The appraisal district will schedule an appointment for you sometime in the next several months – please be aware that this is expected to be another record year for protests, so the timeframe will be slightly longer than in prior years.
- Bring any information that you think will be of help to your hearing – pictures of your property/neighborhood, engineering reports, other documentation that you believe supports your protest.
- You’ll need to determine that you’re not paying more than similar houses in your neighborhood. You can research this information on TCADs website.
We have developed a tool (in Excel) to help you protest your appraisal. Feel free to contact your Juice Realtor and he/she will be able to send this along to you. It’s worked well for other clients in last year’s protests.
Moveable Feasts
You are hungry. You have a short amount of time to eat and get back to work. You are sick of the same old leftovers you have the other 4 days a week. A food trailer sounds like a novel and unique choice! However, it’s easy to get frustrated with the unpredictability and, what seems to be, random hours/locations of many food trailers. (Open Tues, Thurs and Saturday from 2-7 & Wednesday from 9-12…for example) They seem to come and go very quickly, and it can be hard to know when and where they are. Especially when the city estimates that by the end of 2011 there will be 1,620 mobile food carts! Who can keep track? Your friends at Juice have put together a 3-step solution to help you get your grub on:
1.) There are 2 Apps with good reviews that can help you find your grub of choice. We tried Eat St. & Austin Food Carts. Both are FREE! Download them. They will use your location to find the trucks nearest you. You can click on whatever catches your eye. It lists their hours, menus and mentions on sites like Twitter and Facebook that might give you a clue as to what is their best menu item.
2.) Check out this website: www.austinfoodcarts.com . This blogger keeps track of what is going on the local food cart scene. You can pull up a map of all the carts, then,on the “sidebar”, sort by whatever cuisine floats your boat. It will pull up all the carts with that tag.
3.) Twitter and Facebook. Start becoming a fan of your favorite places or ones you hear about and want to try. This way, when they roll on to a new location, have a special event or new menu item you will be the first to know and can tweet it to all your friends.
buon appetito!
