PROPERTY VALUES EXPECTED TO RISE AGAIN

  

Property valuations are on the rise again in Washington County.  Willy Dilworth, Chief Appraiser for the Washington County Appraisal District, says property owners can expect to see their property values increase this spring.

Dilworth says there are several factors driving up the value of both residential and commercial property in the county.  He says homes, land and even older buildings in downtown Brenham have been selling at previously unheard of prices.  The State of Texas uses property sales from the past 12 months to determine whether Dilworth and his staff are fairly valuing property.  Since sale prices have been rising, Dilworth says he is forced to increase property appraisals right along with them.

Every two years the State conducts a study to check property valuations in Washington County.  If the study finds too great of a difference between the State’s valuation and that of the local appraisal district, State funding for local school districts could be negatively impacted.  Austin County was recently notified that they are under appraising properties within the Bellville, Sealy and Brazos School Districts.  Austin County’s Appraisal District has a one year grace period to get property values “in line” with what the State considers fair.  Dilworth says he doesn’t want to get in that situation in Washington County.

Property tax appraisal notices are expected to be in the mail around May 1st.

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15 Comments

  1. there is an old saying that nothing is for sure but death and taxes so if you don’t want to pay higher property taxes then I suggest you sell and then rent

  2. Raise sales tax so all, including illegals, pay their fair share…but, politicians don’t get reelected doing that.

    1. Raising the SALES tax would make the MOST sense. Everyone picks up the slack not just property owners… However since that is the most logical fix to the problem it will never happen.

    2. Many moons ago, you paid property tax on each vehicle that you owed, but the legislature did away with this. Maybe it’s time to bring this back since clearly there are too many non property owners that are literally getting a free ride!

  3. I would sale my house to them for what the appraisal but they say they don’t buy houses/ properties! Go figure that! So no fair.

  4. I live in a 1300 sq ft..1 acre , my house valued went from 130,000 to 108,000, not sure why? But yet the taxes went from $1,400 to $2,000!!! What is wrong with the system!!!!! Like seriously! I will end up leaving Brenham and moving to Navasota or another small town.

  5. The City Council, Commussioners Court and School Board still set the amount of taxes that you pay. The Appraisal value does not automatically increase your taxes. Each entity must look at the effective tax rate based on the new appraisals and decide if they plan to raise more more money or not. They can lower the rate to bring in the same amount of money based on the new values. State law truly dictates what your house has to be valued at. Period. When our fellow citizens have been selling their houses at higher values no one complains. That now affects the values.

  6. The taxing is going to force us to sell our home and land. We have a 2200 square foot home on 10.5 acres. Dirt road..No street lights.Every two months a grader/ maintainer grades the road. I pay $7,000.00 a year taxes.For what ? Some clown driving a maintainer down the road.
    The wife and I are both retired and on fixed incomes.

  7. We have an appraiser hired by an appointed board increasing taxes based on a mystery directive from a very secretive division of a state agency staffed by bureaucrats. Taxpayers need to wake up about this situation. Until we fix this government spending problem, these entities will come up with even more creative ways to make sure they bleed us dry.

  8. Everyone who is selling property immediately drop your asking price by 20%!!! That should fix it.

  9. The sales tax revenues are in a freefall, and much more as in a reason Brenham Resident stated. Residents drive elsewhere to work for better wages to pay high taxes here, AND for years they SHOP for groceries and more before returning home. More competitive pricing on goods, but LESS sales taxes for our county. The city council is about to approve another LARGE income based housing project. WHY? A BIG reason is SENIORS are taxed and insured out of their homes. Sure valuations freeze, BUT THE RATES per $100 of value go up every few years. DO NOT blame tax appraisers, they follow orders from your STATE REPRESENTATIVES to increase our taxes to pay for schools. And your county commissioners are given unfunded mandates by the STATE that cost us BIG money to implement. DO NOT blame the FEDS, they have been giving us many thousands of dollars in grants these last 10 years or so. STOP voting against YOUR OWN BEST INTERESTS!

  10. The County’s system of checks in balances will fail, yet again. Assume that property values increase significantly, yet again. Most of the county employees, especially first-responders like Sheriff’s deputies and EMS, live within Washington County; their property values also increase. The Commissioners rarely give raises. As long as these County employees continue living in Washington County, they “operate” personally at a loss; their paychecks are worth less and less. These are the same first-responders who use county emergency vehicles (deputies) to travel to and from their homes (and for good reason – they need to be able to respond to large emergencies, i.e. the saltdome explosion, train derailment at Brookshire Brothers, etc.). The cost to the taxpayers will increase if county employees continue to have to pay more and more in taxes without seeing a raise in their pay. These GOOD employees will be forced to live in surrounding counties – Washington County will have to foot the bill for gas, wear/tear on vehicles as they travel to/from their homes, etc. In addition, these displaced employees will be spending their money IN THE SURROUNDING COUNTIES where they will soon be forced to live because the cost of living has exceeded their incomes. Can these employees be replaced in their jobs by other warm bodies? Of course. Is it worth it to our safety? Absolutely not.

    My point – if you’re going to have to increase the property values of the citizens of Washington County, at least use the money gathered by the County to compensate the people who keep the County safe and who keep the County running. A reasonable increase in pay will ultimately save the county hundreds of thousands. EVERYONE benefits from a county with competent employees. We do not want to “outsource” our county employee positions to people living in other counties. It’s the equivalent to outsourcing our jobs to China – it’s just un-American.

  11. I expected this to happen for some time now. The sales tax rebates to the city and county have declined. How else do you expect them to make up their spending.

  12. This is crazy. Two years ago they DOUBLED the value of our property in one year. Half of the land is in a flood plane and is under water a couple of times a year. For some strange reason, we never recieved the tax value notice on the property and we did not even find out untill it was to late to contest the valuation.

  13. I have never understood how our tax appraiser comes up with their home values, I live in a 2200 sq ft home on 1 acre of land my home value is 329,000 my neighbor lives in a 2700 sq ft home on one acre with a pool and their value is 224,000 I pay about 1200 dollars more than they do in taxes per year , How is that a fair value system?.

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