Sometime in April, a plain white envelope arrives from your county appraisal district. Inside is your Notice of Appraised Value. For most homeowners in McLennan, Bell, and Williamson counties, this piece of mail induces immediate anxiety. The numbers are almost always higher than last year, and the layout is intentionally dense.
The most important thing to understand is this: Your Notice of Appraised Value is not a bill. It is a proposal. It is the county telling you what they believe your property is worth, which will eventually be used to calculate your tax bill in October. Because it is a proposal, it is entirely negotiable—provided you know what you are looking at.
The Three Numbers That Matter
When you look at the notice, your eyes will naturally gravitate toward the highest number on the page. However, to effectively protest your taxes, you need to understand the distinction between three specific figures listed on the document.
1. Market Value
This is what the appraisal district claims your home would sell for on the open market as of January 1st of the current tax year. This number is generated by a mass appraisal algorithm, not a human walking through your home. The algorithm looks at broad neighborhood trends, square footage, and recent sales. It does not know that your roof needs replacing or that your kitchen hasn't been updated since 1998.
2. Assessed Value (or Appraised Value)
If you have a Homestead Exemption, this is the number that actually dictates your tax bill. Texas law caps the amount your Assessed Value can increase each year at 10% (excluding new improvements). If your Market Value jumps by 25%, your Assessed Value will only increase by 10%. The gap between the two is your homestead cap benefit.
3. Estimated Taxes
This is a projection of what you will owe in October, based on the proposed Assessed Value and last year's tax rates. Ignore this number. Tax rates are set by the taxing entities (school districts, cities, counties) later in the year. You cannot protest your tax rate; you can only protest your property value.
Where Homeowners Make Their First Mistake
The most common mistake homeowners make is looking at their Assessed Value, seeing that it is lower than what they could sell their house for, and deciding not to protest. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of Texas property tax law.
You do not have to prove that your home is worth less than the Market Value to win a protest. Under Texas Tax Code §41.43(b)(3), you can protest on the grounds of Equal and Uniform Appraisal. This means that even if your home could sell for $500,000, if the appraisal district is valuing similar homes in your neighborhood at $450,000, your home must also be valued at $450,000.
Finding Your Protest Deadline
Somewhere on the front page of your notice, usually near the top right or bottom left, is your protest deadline. By law, this deadline is May 15th, or 30 days after the notice was mailed to you—whichever is later. If you miss this deadline, you lose your right to appeal for the entire year, and the proposed value becomes final.
What to Do Next
Once you have located your Market Value, your Assessed Value, and your deadline, the next step is to determine if the county's proposal is fair. You cannot do this by guessing or by looking at Zillow. You must look at the county's own data for comparable properties.
This is where Parity Tax Engine comes in. Instead of spending hours digging through the county CAD website trying to build a spreadsheet of comparable homes, you can run your address through Parity. In seconds, it will pull the district's data, run the statutory adjustment grid, and tell you exactly what your value should be based on the Equal and Uniform standard.
Your Notice of Appraised Value is the opening offer. It is up to you to make the counteroffer.