Property Tax Assessments to Increase 16%!

I wrote about this back in February, and today's front-page headline in the Austin-American Statesman solidifies the story:

Travis Home Appraisals Balloon 16%
Increase even higher for commercial, multifamily properties;
Williamson homeowners can expect 5-12% rise.

It said the average for Travis County (i.e., Austin) will be 16% from last year, however, homeowners whose values last year were <$400k will likely see rate increases of 14% or less. They also had a graph in the article that showed the average home price in Travis County in 2000 was $153,668. This year, the average has skyrocketed to $236,559 - an increase of almost 54% in five years (or an average of 9% per year). Astounding.

Also worth noting is that the big news in Texas politics right now is the Governors plan to reduce homeowner property taxes statewide. This - along with school financing - has been a hot topic for the past several years. The Governors plan, though, will only reduce the homeowners bill by some meager amount (i.e., <10%, if I recall), so any gains made by the passing of Rick Perry's plan will be more than offset by the rising appraisal values this year.

Of course the bad news is that if you own property in Travis and/or Williamson counties, expect sticker shock when you open your tax bill for this year in the coming weeks. Likewise, I expect to start seeing an increase in foreclosures - or, at least, more tax leins. Texas is already the leading state in foreclosures, and I believe it will only increase more with all these happenings.

Stay tuned.

Edit: Bah! I found the story on A-AS's website after posting this, so everyone can read the bad/good news. You can read the story here (note: you will need to remove all cookies from www.statesman.com in order to read this story.)