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Opinion

NEW! Full transcript of The Watchdog’s 2020 Property Tax & Appraisal Protest Seminar

You won’t believe the amount of useful information about your property appraisal and tax

Here’s a transcript of The Dallas Morning News Watchdog Dave Lieber’s 2020 Property Tax Seminar with two top experts. (Originally recorded May 1, 2020.)

The video of the event is here.

Dave Lieber: Hey. Well, hello, everybody. Welcome to The Dallas Morning News’ first DMN Downloads webinar. Pretty exciting. A thousand people have signed up, and also this video will be shown later, but this is the 2020 Watchdog Guide to Filing Your Property Tax Protest. I’m Dave Lieber, The Watchdog columnist at The Dallas Morning News. I would like to start off with a little limerick with a couple of my co-panelists. Say hi, Glenn. Say hi, Will.

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Glenn Goodrich:

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Hello.

Glenn Goodrich of propertytax.io speaks at a previous property tax seminar held by The...
Glenn Goodrich of propertytax.io speaks at a previous property tax seminar held by The Watchdog in the auditorium of Robert Cobb Middle School in Frisco, Texas on May 1, 2019. (Brian Elledge/The Dallas Morning News)(Brian Elledge)
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Will Wiggins: Hello.

Will Wiggins of North Texas Property Tax Services speaks  at a property tax seminar held by...
Will Wiggins of North Texas Property Tax Services speaks at a property tax seminar held by The Watchdog in the auditorium of Robert Cobb Middle School in Frisco, Texas on May 1, 2019. (Brian Elledge/The Dallas Morning News)(Brian Elledge)

Dave Lieber: This limerick is called “Bringing Down the House Appraised Value,” and it’s written by Bruce Davidson, Mr. Limerick of Carrollton, Texas.

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Ready, guys?

Glenn Goodrich: I’m ready.

Dave Lieber: All right, here we go. “So you bought your American dream. So proud that you’re starting to beam, til the county addressed, the bounty assessed, and now you’re starting to scream. But you always know you have a say over ransom they want you to pay. Because they work for you, and if they only knew how bad you have wallet decay.”

Glenn Goodrich: “So when you present to Big Brother, you’ll need this and that from the other, learning truth from the shark, so you don’t embark on moving back in with your mother. And don’t allow equalization, because maybe you took a vacation. Over adding that den, they’re adding it in as they look for value inflation.”

Will Wiggins: “And remember, each date is the headline. You’re sunk if you’re missing the deadline, as they’ll laugh in your face and wrap up your case and usher you off to the breadline. So you’ll take them the proof evidentiary that appraisals the highest this century, and they ought to do penance along with a sentence of stay in the state penitentiary.”

Dave Lieber: “So file by the middle of May or a month from the day they convey that your middle class mansion with little expansion was bumped to appraisal chalet. And whether your home is as pricey as Shaq’s is, or property value like Daks’ is, be brief and concise for relief on the price of your property value, not taxes.”

Bruce Davidson, thank you from Carrollton. He wrote that just for today. You guys did good. Before I introduce you, I’d like to give a quick overview. The goal here is basically to teach you how to file property tax protest if you haven’t, and it’s also to teach you if you already have what the latest information is. This year is a particularly horrible year for property tax for about four or five reasons, which I quickly want to share with you.

Dave Lieber, “The Watchdog”
Dave Lieber, “The Watchdog”(Courtesy of Renee Tacheny)

First of all, we have this Senate Bill Two, which is the brand new property tax law. It’s pretty, pretty big, so that complicates things incredibly. Then we have the problem right now where that’s supposed to limit property tax increases, but it apparently won’t because cities and counties are looking for a way around it. It’s supposed to be limited to 3.5% and 2.5% for cities, counties and school districts before they have to have an election, but now it looks like they’re going to use some kind of emergency declaration mumbo jumbo to maybe get around it.

That was the subject of my column today, where I call out Gov. Abbott for not knowing this, which we can get into in a little bit. Let’s see the third reason why this is crazy is obviously because of the coronavirus. Glenn and Will, you don’t know this yet. I just got a note from the man I consider the top real estate expert in Dallas-Fort Worth, and that’s Steve Brown, the real estate editor from The Morning News. He just told me his sources tell him that in the Dallas Central Appraisal District, residential are supposed to go up 8% this year on average, and commercial building goes up a whopping 40% on average for appraised value. [Note: In an update, a week later, Dallas Central Appraisal District Chief Appraiser Ken Nolan says the actual figure for commercial properties’ taxable value growth is 21.5%.]

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The other complication this year is everybody has a different deadline. These are all the different counties you can see there. It’s all over. There’s five different deadlines.

That’s bad. Finally, how are we going to handle protests with social distancing?.

I’m a guy that has my own flag, “Everybody file a protest.” I’ve been running this campaign for several years. I’ve been into this property tax thing for about 10 years, and I have a definite bias.

The Watchdog uses this virtual flag for his campaign. After he announced it, about 1 out of...
The Watchdog uses this virtual flag for his campaign. After he announced it, about 1 out of 7 North Texas homeowners filed a protest for their property taxes. The number has grown considerably in area counties.(Graphic by Marina Trahan Martinez / )
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I just want to read you some of the headlines of some of my stories, just so you know where my bias is. “Biggest scam in Texas when elected officials pretend to be anti-tax, but actually raise your taxes;” "This is how the State of Texas confuses you about the cost of your property taxes;” “How you and your neighbors can lower your property tax;” “Why paying your property tax without a protest is a sucker’s game.”

Those are just some of the many stories I’ve written, and also I’ll be taking some questions. I already have a whole bunch from the audience, but watchdog@dallasnews.com. If you see me looking at my phone, I’m not being rude. I’m looking at your questions.

Let’s see. I guess without further ado, I’d like to introduce my first panelist. His name’s Glenn Goodrich, and he runs a property tax.io website, which gives you, for about $70, most of the information you need to go in and protest with. He’ll explain all that to you.

He handles Denton, Dallas, Tarrant, Collin and Harris Counties, right, Glenn? Go ahead.

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Glenn Goodrich: Yeah, that’s right. That’s interesting news about the Dallas residential values, because that’s what I’m going to focus on a lot. That’s what my website, PropertyTax.io, caters to is residential properties. I can’t say I’m too shocked by that, because the first graph that I opened up my presentation with is here’s a picture of the stock market from one year, so from May 2019 to May of today.

(Courtesy of Glenn Goodrich)

You see a big green box right here? That’s the world the appraisal district is living in, and this big red box down here, that’s the world that the taxpayers are living, so there’s a big disconnect between your value on January 1st and what we’re currently experiencing in our economy, so that’s what the appraisal district is using as a basis to increase the values on. It’s actually the law, so not to rag on the appraisal district too hard. They’re just following the law to do that, but it’s going to be a challenge this year, for sure, and (I) hate to see that taxpayers are going to be burdened with higher tax bills in a potential recession, likely recession we’re going to see.

Also, I didn’t know that about Dallas. I do work in Harris County, and I was looking at Harris County as a potential crystal ball for this year. They released values early on, and the median increase, this is just the median. The median increase in residential was 4% there, so it sounds like the residents of Dallas are going to get it worse than they did in Harris County. But there were pockets in Harris County that saw well over 10% increase, and keep in mind that Harris also had an oil issue going on around this time and still do, so they got pounded pretty hard. So I’m not surprised that that happened again in Dallas, because the biggest county in Texas had no issue increasing values, and Dallas is following suit.

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Also outside of values -- and Dave, you alluded to this a little bit in your monologue that cities and ISDs are worried about budgets -- that’s a big deal because they look at that for tax rates, so we’ve got to worry about two-front war this year. We’ve got values from the appraisal district, which we got some inside info from Steve Brown that values are going to go up in this area, and I think we also need to prepare for tax rate increases as well. These are just some headlines from around the area that show that.

Just to kind of bring it home into a real world example of what that means for everybody, we hear a lot about freezing values, and that was upsetting to me because I was like, “What about the tax rates?” Because Senate Bill Two was this big come together moment when it was supposed to be that the local tax jurisdictions took ownership of their part of the tax bill. The politicians were some of those people calling to freeze values and they are the ones that decide tax rates or have input on tax rates, but they were never talking about tax rates, only appraisal district values. Dave, you wrote this in a column that if they can increase the value 5%, say, but they set the tax rate to 0%, that means $0 in taxes. That’s the power of the tax rate right there.

Senate Bill Two is going to compound this issue potentially, because they can not only increase the tax rate, but they can potentially go back up to this 8% increase before Senate Bill Two. So are we going to go back to the old ways because of the disaster declaration? There is likely going to be a big debate about this later this year, as to exactly what qualifies as a “disaster.”

This year’s especially important to pay attention to your property tax. Increasing property values, that’s likely going to happen. In fact, I think we know what’s going to happen now. Increasing tax rates, maybe. I think there’s a good argument to be made that you need to watch out for that. Wages falling, unemployment, rising. All that put together, higher tax bills in a recession, so we really need to be paying attention this year and we need to get the word out. If you’re attending this webinar live, we’re probably preaching to the choir, but you guys need to spread the word to everybody else in your neighborhood. Post on your Nextdoor.com, post on Facebook pages about getting people out to take some action this year and make them aware, because a lot of people just kind of skate by and don’t pay attention to property tax, but it really comes to bite people financially.

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The most direct impact you have on your tax bill is protesting the appraisal district’s value. I’m a big proponent of doing it the right way, though. I think you need to be evidence-based when you file an appeal. That makes a decision maker’s job really easy to lower the value. I’m defining a decision maker as somebody at the appraisal district, because, believe it or not, you present evidence at the appraisal district in an informal, maybe you file an online appeal, submit your evidence, a lot of times people get a reduction that way, but a lot of times you don’t. Sometimes you have to go to the appraisal review board, and those are also decision makers, so you’ve got two sets of decision makers. Either way, they’re both going to be evidence based and driven.

So at PropertyTax.io, one of the things we do is help people figure out where to focus their evidence gathering process really easily. If you go to my website, www.PropertyTax.io, you click the instant free analysis, and you just type in your address ...and we’ll give you this nice reduction potential indicator that’s based on what market sales are doing in your area. It’s not just every market sale, but the ones that are credible to use when valuing your property based on how similar they are in size and your build, things like that.

(Courtesy of Glenn Goodrich)
(Courtesy of Glenn Goodrich)
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I remember when Dave, you were using our site at the beginning. You actually scored a red right here. It was red and it said “weak,” and I hated to see that, because I would have loved for my product to help somebody like Dave Lieber, but it did help him in a way, because it told him to focus his efforts not on market sales, because that wasn’t going to help him, but instead focus on condition. I think that saved Dave a lot of time up front, and he focused his efforts on disputing the condition of his property. He showed some pictures of some scraped hardwoods on his floor, and he was able to get a reduction that way. I think it’s really helpful either way you go. We tell you where you stand really quickly and easily with recent sales, and all that’s for free. You don’t have to sign up for that.

So in over 10 years of working in property tax, I’ve learned that appraisal districts have a huge technological advantage. When I was first starting out and just kind of feeling my way out with things, I would use recent sales, like a list from MLS, and I was tired of getting hit with this argument. “Well, after we run the comps through our system and make all these adjustments, the value actually indicates much higher than what you’re presenting.” I was put on my back heels there and surprised by that, and I realized that the appraisal district have these million dollar systems at their disposal. Really easy for them to dispute your value or try to tear up your argument, so I set out to fix that.

(Courtesy of Glenn Goodrich)

Here's just an example. I went to Texas A&M. I graduated there. TexAgs is a great forum for all kinds of conversations, and Harris County, actually it's really active for property tax, but I've noticed up here in the Dallas area, it's not so active for property tax. Maybe if you're an A&M grad and you're on TexAgs, we can start changing that and be more active on our local chapter here. But this guy experienced exactly what I was experiencing. He had this comp that he was using down the street, he thought it was going to reduce his value by $11,000, and after they ran it through their system, they said, "Nope, it's actually coming out to be right where you're valued at." He was upset by that because he wasn't able to get a reduction and didn't really understand that system.

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So at PropertyTax.io, we level the playing field with the appraisal district in just a few clicks of the mouse. We make it easy to produce evidence compliant with the CAD system.

(Courtesy of Glenn Goodrich)
(Courtesy of Glenn Goodrich)

Here’s a screenshot of what we do, first of all. Keep in mind, you don’t have to use my evidence to do this or my website to do this. The concepts apply in general, so our executive summary is brief and concise. It tells the decision makers exactly the value you’re asking for, so again, you don’t need my evidence to do that. You can decide your own value, but be upfront and obvious about the value that you’re asking for. Then tell them why you’re asking for that value. In this case, they’re using sales comparisons, and the appraisal districts like to use maps and all that to gain credibility with the decision makers, mainly at the ARBs, so we decided maps were pretty important, so we include a lot of maps in our reports. That lets you take control over telling them about your property instead of relying on the appraisal district telling them about your property.

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(Courtesy of Glenn Goodrich)
(Courtesy of Glenn Goodrich)

Again, we take the recent sales and we map them out, and we actually adjust those using all of their adjustments that they use in their system, and we cater it to each appraisal district because they’re all different and they all do things a different way. So we had to just say, “OK. You know what? We just have to create a custom way of doing it for every appraisal district,” so now you’re speaking the language of the appraisal district with our evidence.

I put this in here, additional improvements. This is all open records information, and a lot of times you can go on a website and get this information. If you just look up your property, a lot of people don’t pay attention to this additional improvements part, and that’s where I see a lot of mistakes being made. Things like attached garages and covered porches. Who would know that a property has $15,000 assigned to it in covered porches? That can be a big deal, because sometimes another property only has covered porches that are $5,000, and you’re off $10,000 in your thinking on that. Just look those up online, or, again, we make it all available conveniently on my website, PropertyTax.io.

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Your biggest advantage though, is that you know more about your properties than anybody else. You can go beyond the CAD’s system and tell the appraisal districts something that they don’t already know about your property, mainly through photos and comments that you’ve made. Here’s a good headline. This is a story from a fellow Dallas Morning News writer, Dave. I don’t know if you know her: Leona Allen. She references you in the article that she wrote. This was from a couple of years ago, but the headline is, “Here’s how I knocked $13,000 off my property tax appraisal in 30 minutes. The process was so easy, I’m vowing to protest every year.” It should be noted that this was Leona’s first year to file a protest, so she’s not some pro. She doesn’t have a ton of experience. It was her first time doing it, and she had success and she felt emboldened and wanted to tell everyone else how easy it was. Now to be clear, Leona did not use my website to do this, but we did take her findings, and it inspired a workflow that we built into our app.

So here’s what Leona did: She filed her protest online. She got a Realtor friend to gather the recent sales of her neighborhood, and then she got photos from recent sales on Zillow and Trulia. So she just looked up those addresses on Zillow and Trulia, and in her hearing, the district appraiser lowered the value to the average of the recent sales that she brought in. Now, I know that Will is probably looking at this, and I’m also thinking the same thing.. There’s probably a lot of holes that Leona had in her argument, because as seasoned pros, we’re all about how to optimize and make this process perfect, but the bottom line is that Leona took action. She did something, and she went above and beyond what I see a lot of people do, which is just file a protest and forget about it.

She did her homework, and she got photos, and she did something different. She showed them that she’s done her homework, so at a minimum, if you take away anything from today, it was Leona’s first time. If it’s your first time and you’re thinking about doing it, you can do it, and it’s really not that hard to do. I think there’s a lot more that you can do. I think when you hire a tax agent like Will, he’s going to do a lot more for you than what this is obviously doing. We’re just getting a list of sales. There’s all kinds of adjustments that she was probably missing. Who knows if there were comps that were better to use than the ones that she presented. We also look at this same thing at PropertyTax.io, so we try to optimize this experience, but good job, Leona, for taking action and getting a result.

This is the workflow that -- it inspired in our website. So you can look at the photos of the sales, and you can show things like this comp’s kitchen is nicer than my kitchen. You can upload a photo of your own kitchen to compare it side by side, and keep in mind that you don’t have to use my website to do this. There’s all kinds of resources to get those available, but you could say that it would cost me $25,000 to upgrade my kitchen to look like this comp’s kitchen. Now what you’ve done is you’ve overwritten the appraisal district’s adjustments with your own adjustment, and you’re providing photographic evidence to do that.

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I think that’s going to be pretty hard to beat if I’m a district appraiser, because they’re very database-driven, and photos are not very database friendly. It’s very subjective, and you’re giving your opinion about something, but it’s pretty obvious when you look at a side by side comparison as to which looks better than the other. That’s just an example of how we took Leona’s workflow and built it into our system.

(Courtesy of Glenn Goodrich)

Here's what it looks like in the report, so it's nice and organized and easy. You can see that here's my property, and here's the cop's property and all the adjustments that are made. We also coach you so you feel empowered with the information that you need to succeed. You have direct access to experts and our online chat or by email, and we also have a ton of resources for free that I'm going to show at the end of the slideshow. If you go to help.property tax.io, that's our help center, and you can search for things like homestead and issues about filing a homestead will come up. We have screenshots and step-by-steps and instructions on how to protest online with each appraisal district, because they all have their different online protest systems, so we help you navigate that process. Again, all that's free, just go to help.property tax.io and search, and we probably have an article for a question that you have.

But our goal is to be your coach, not just provide software, but we want to help you succeed. We know that sometimes that means helping you go above and beyond what the software is already providing to you. We want to be your Bill Belichick. This is a real life example of how we’ve done that. Believe it or not, this property is in a $450,000 home area, and the appraisal district was using $4,000 to value a pool in that area. It was obvious, you’ll see from the photos, that it’s not a $4,000 pool. These are just some of the angles that you can look at to gain advantages over the appraisal district’s system. There’s all kinds of different line items besides pools that you could use this for. This is just one example. Again, you don’t use my website to do this. You can dig into the details on your own, but it’s definitely worth digging into because you’ll see how this person did that and succeeded.

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So he was noticed at $448,000. “Propertytax.io said I should have reduced my value to $425,000. When I filed my protests, I requested the appraisal district’s evidence.” That’s key. Always do that. The CAD emailed me an offer to reduce the value to $441,000, and they provided four comps they’re using as evidence." So he went in and entered in the comps that they provided him into our system. OK, nice. It matches exactly the $441,000 offer that he got, but he noticed that that property has a pool, so he’s going to check out the value of what that pool is. Scrolls down and sees, “Oh, that one’s valued at $12,000.” OK, so he looks at a photo of the pool and goes, “That does not look like a $12,000 pool, especially in my neighborhood. That looks more like a $25,000 pool.”

What he did was he made his own adjustment for that. You can see the number at the top left decreasing down because he’s doing that. He noticed another property with a pool, checks that out. Scrolls down and finds the photo of that one. Again, this is a true story. That one was actually valued at $4,000. No way that’s valued at $4,000. He’s like, “More like $25,000.” So again, he does the same process, reduces it down. Now he’s taking the appraisal district’s own evidence, and he’s gotten their value from $441,000 to $433,000, but he notices that the pools seem to be an issue, so what if you just removed them from the equation altogether? Now he’s closer to $431,000. OK, that’s even better. Using the CAD’s own evidence and adding photos showing that the pools are worth way more, ARB panel members reduced the value to $430,000. Again, you don’t need my website to do that. I think we make it very easy to do something like that, but you can do all this on your own.

It’s just, you’ve got to look at all the information. Don’t just trust and sign off on adjustments that the district is making. If something doesn’t make sense to you, look into it a little bit more. So he was in his ARB hearing, and this is from our online chat system that he sent. So he got it reduced to 430K. The tip on the pole made all the difference. And I like this because this is a little intel on how ARB chairmen think. He said the chair actually thanked him for a concise presentation. And he said, FYI, the owners were on an 0-7 losing streak before his discussion.

So in other words, this ARB wasn’t just rubber stamping homeowners coming in and giving them a reduction. And he said without us and the report that he couldn’t have done it. And so I bring that up because we’re not just software and sending you off to do it yourself. We like to coach you and figure out angles that you can use to get the value lowered.

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So 2020 is going to be the year of the remote appeal, submitting credible evidence and an online protest is what the CADs are begging you to do this year. There’s going to be no in-person meetings, meaning written communication is much more important this year. Going back to what that ARB chairman said, being concise is always better. Sometimes it’s harder to write one page than it is to write three pages. Say exactly what you’re asking for and why you’re asking for it, and then proceed to back it up with evidence. So this is an example of how we do it in our report with the executive summary.

(Courtesy of Glenn Goodrich)

You can do your own version of this, where again, be right up front about the value you're asking for and then say why you're asking for that value. In ours we do some appraisal district speak so we're speaking the language, so we're saying that all the comps are in this neighborhood code. That's appraisal district speak for the neighborhood that it's in. And then they're all the same building quality. That's how they decide the quality of construction, things like that.

So it’s not hard to do your homework. It makes the decision maker’s job a lot easier. Our biggest reward is when we help someone who’s never filed a protest get in the game. The word empowerment comes up repeatedly. I think you saw that from Leona’s article, that it was her first time, she got a reduction, and she felt really excited and really empowered by that, and she wanted to spread the word. So it’s really not that hard to do and it’s going to make you feel really good if you can do something that you didn’t think you could do before that. And as a coach there’s no better feeling. And you know what? PropertyTax.io doesn’t have to be the only coach. If you’ve been through this process before and you’ve been successful, you can be a coach also. Have that conversation with your neighbor, six feet away, but still have that conversation with your neighbor. Talk about it on Facebook. Talk about it on NextDoor, things like that.

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Again, if you want to go to our free resources, just go to help.propertytax.io, search for something like homestead, we have all kinds of articles on that. We also launched this year a website called PropertyTaxUniversity.com. We have four courses that we’ve done with that. If you’re new to the game in property tax and you just want to know more, I would suggest doing, “Understanding your value” or, “The Texas property tax system.” If you’re a pro, I would do, “The evidence in an appeal” because we talk about how to do market values and things like that. And if you’ve just got questions about exemptions, maybe over 65, you think about moving, how does my over 65 tax ceiling transfer work, we have a course on exemptions as well that covers homesteads and things like that.

All right, Dave.

Dave Lieber: Glenn, folks can see why I asked you to be on this, because that is a very, very original website. I have a few questions for you before I introduce everyone to property tax consultant Will Wiggins. And I call him The Shark. First off, you can’t come onto my webinar and use Belichick and Tom Brady as an example. When that happened I just felt like 200 people just dropped off. Just remember, this is Cowboys territory, all right? [Laughing.]

Glenn Goodrich: I was warned about that, so I apologize. And I should have heeded the advice.

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Dave Lieber: You should apologize for that. Some stuff on your website actually costs $70, right? Without doing a commercial, what’s the difference between the free stuff and the $70 package?

Glenn Goodrich: The $70 was the evidence that you saw right off the bat and the ability to interact with the comps and make your own adjustments. That’s what we charge for. And we actually have a cheaper version that if you’re arguing just condition and you can upload your own photos and estimates and things like that, that’s $25, and we help you organize the report super fast and easy. Sometimes size limits can be an issue submitting evidence into the appraisal district. They have size limits on the file size. So we run it through compression and things like that. Sometimes people get stressed out if they’re filing a last-minute appeal and they can’t upload their evidence because of size. So the $75 one is where you saw me interacting with comps, selecting comps, making adjustments, using photos, things like that.

But we also have an express report that you don’t have to do any of that. You can just accept our automated report and we spit out everything for you. The other stuff that you saw with the photos and everything, that’s customizing our express report. The free stuff is, we spend most of our time focusing on the free stuff, because our marketing strategy is to be like the de facto customer service of property tax. So you can check in with us and talk to property tax experts on our website, you don’t have to sign up or pay for that. So online chat is super popular, help.propertytax.io, our help center is open and completely free. And then PropertyTaxUniversity.com is completely free.

Dave Lieber: OK, good. One final question for you: Real quickly, my story today in the paper talks about Gov. Abbott saying we should all get a break on our taxes possibly because of COVID-19. Would you comment on that briefly and explain why I called that out as a falsehood?

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Glenn Goodrich: Yeah, my first slide showed the world the appraisal district lives in and the world that the taxpayers ... Gov. Abbott is living in that red box that I showed, the taxpayers’ box, but that’s not the law. The law says that you have to value your property as of January 1st of 2020.

Think about how unfair that would be for residents of Harris County if Dallas just decided, “Oh, you know what, we’re going to set our date of valuation for May 1st to give people a break.” That wouldn’t be fair to residents of Harris, that they’re just a moving ball with the date.

So we all have to play by the same rules. I don’t understand that comment that Gov. Abbott gave. I think it’s super confusing for somebody at the highest office in the state to say something like that. But again, it’s January 1st of 2020, that’s the date, that’s well established and that’s not debated.

Dave Lieber: Right. And he said it wasn’t that way, so I don’t know. All right, that was great, Glenn, stick around because you’re going to help us with the questions. Now I’m going to introduce a fellow, Will Wiggins, who runs, with his partners, reiterate

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Property Tax Services out of Addison. And Will does a lot of different counties. And the reason he’s here is because I call him the shark. And the reason I call him The Shark because a good friend of mine, Linda Baker, a retired appraisal review board member from Colleyville, she told me this. She said, “In every hearing Will Wiggins is seriously relentless, presenting rational evidence for his clients. He is always the last agent to wrap up here as a result. It’s frequently a contentious hearing, which is exactly what I would want if I had an agent representing me.”

So Will, my first question to you -- and you can launch into your explanations -- but I just want to ask you this: The best, smartest advice I’ve ever heard from you is you say that people like me should not go into our protest to the appraisal review board and say, “Hi, my taxes are too high. Oh, help me with my taxes. I can’t afford my taxes.” Because that’s a turn off and that doesn’t help at all. So tell us about that, and then tell us about what you think we should know for 2020.

Will Wiggins: Great. Thanks, Dave.

Can you see me OK? Let’s see. Yeah, so as a segue there, it’s the wrong motivation, is the bottom line. It suggests that you’re concerned about your taxes, and what you need to be concerned about is your value, that’s the only thing in play. And that’s as best as I can say it, which mentions, brings up the COVID point, too. If you go in there, while I agree with both you and Glenn, if you go in there talking about how COVID has done this and that to your value, I will grant a little bit of leeway for the governor in that the law does state that you have 36 months [23.013.b.1] to use comparables. And I’ll throw this out as an example I just thought of as I was listening to you: If a property sold for, let’s say, $400,000 in October and a very similar property sold for $300,000 in March, maybe that was the effect of COVID. And they’re both allowable, they’re both allowable sales, but the only thing that is absolutely certain is that it must be valued as of January 1.

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But that might give you some, basically offer some input or some evidence into how values are dropping. And in between those two times, perhaps that range of value was $350,000 instead of, say, the $400,000 that was indicated back in October. So just an example there that, it could be useful, maybe not, but it could be. So I wouldn’t throw it out, but I certainly wouldn’t make that one of your key three points, and I would emphasize that, to go into every hearing with three points. So with that I’ll go through some of my points that I wanted to make.

No. 1 is, don’t miss that deadline. You showed an exhibit that had all the different protest deadlines, and while that’s true ... Yeah, that one there. Yeah. While that’s true, take, for instance, Dallas CAD. They have put out that they will allow protest deadlines up through June 15th, is their deadline in Dallas, for instance. But the law is specific about a deadline date of May 15th. So in Tarrant, for instance, they have sent their notices out but they’ve only sent them to 376,000 properties [SFR-”A1” State Code]. So if you’re one of the 175,000 properties that hasn’t been noticed yet, take caution. Because districts don’t have to send you a notice. If they don’t raise your value, they don’t have to send you a notice of value. So if they don’t, your protest deadline is in fact still May 15th. So that’s something to be especially leery of, no matter what. If you don’t get a notice, your protest deadline is May 15th, that’s for the State of Texas [25.19 and 41.44.a.1].

So I’ll just say that, just remember that your protest deadline is either May 15th, that static date, or 30 days after you receive your notice. One thing in that big packet of SB2 that you mentioned is that they have disallowed the ARB to increase your value. I think that’s rather significant, because people need to know that now there’s no risk. They don’t have to worry. They can go in there and try to make their fight, and they’re disallowed to increase your value. I think that’s rather important. With that, again, the thing about the COVID and using that in your presentation or not, well, the only appraiser in the room is the one at the district. And so they would have to confirm whatever sales that you’re using. So often times ... If we start to see the actual market be affected by this, which it probably will be because of employment and wages, etc., it probably will be. But have those effects really shown up in time to affect the January 1 appraisal date? Maybe, maybe not, but you need to leave it on the appraiser in the room to confirm that sale.

And if it’s on MLS or this and that and the other, then they might include it. But they only have so much time to do that, and that’s usually typically up through March. So wish you the best with that argument. One thing, another thing about Senate bill 2, you guys mentioned the 8% vs. the 3.5% voted. That’s true. I wish the governor would make an exception, because that Senate bill 2 actually helped lower and limit the budgets. And this is certainly a time when we need that. Not the other way around, we don’t need to go back to higher tax rate. That seems crazy to me, but that is what it is. And while your value may go up, your value may stay the same, but your taxes can still go up.

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So again, I always say the rubber meets the road at the hearing. Those tax entity hearings is where you need to be about whether or not you’re going to get more taxes. It’s just whether or not you allow them to do that by vote. So be cognizant of that. Some people lately, and I’ve been talking to a few people, they’ve been confusing the 10% and the homestead limit with this 3.5%. A lot of people have been thinking that their homestead is now, it used to be 10% limit, but now it’s 3.5%. I keep hearing that. A lot of people confused by that. Those are very different things. As you know, the 3.5% and the 8%, the rollback rate, all of that has to do with the tax rates for sure.

But the homestead exemption and its limit to your taxable value is and will remain at 10%. So just remember that that refers to the taxable or the capped value. I’ll get into that, and I actually have an exhibit here to show you what I mean there, but it’s just that. The 10% has to do with your taxable value and the other, the 3.5%, has something entirely different to do with the taxing entities. So keep that in mind. If I can share my screen here, let’s see, I’ll show you the exhibit that I was offering. Let’s see here.

(Courtesy of Will Wiggins)

So I put together a snippet here of, for instance, a Dallas CAD website. And you can see here in the highlight, if you go to Dallas CAD, they have market value right here. And they show that the market value is $7.5. And then they show that the capped value is $6 million, right? So that $6 million represents the 10% increase from the year prior. I see, what is it, probably around $5.4 the year prior, and now he was capped. This is last year, but he was kept at $6 million. But his market value is $7.5. So they call it capped and Dallas calls it market. This is a Tarrant CAD website snippet, where they call it market and appraised. And you see that the lower one here, the $1.7 compared to the market value of $2.4. So again, this was probably valued around, oh, I don’t know, $1.6, $1.61 the year before, and now it’s at $1.74, 10% higher. And then they had the market value at $2.4. So there’s the big difference between those two.

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Then when you go to Collin CAD, I give them the star, because at least this makes it pretty easy to understand: They have your market value and they have what’s called your ag loss. There’s a jurisdictional exception... an appraisal standard that commands that they appraise ag properties a certain way. That’s not the case in this example, but you can see that’s why the appraised value equals the market value at $3.1. Then they have the homestead cap loss. And in the industry that’s what we recognize, is the amount that’s lost to the cap for the 10% limit, the cap loss. But you can see that Collin calls it the assessed value.

Will Wiggins:

So we have assessed value, appraised value, and capped value, all for the same thing, what is the taxable value? (taxable includes exemption deductions) And that can certainly be confusing at times. So if you're confused, what I say is, just look for the larger one. So the larger one is the one that you can argue. It's as simple as that. On any one of these websites, here, here, here, here, the larger one is the one that you can fight. And when you protest you're fighting the concept of market value. And the big one is always the market value, also known as the appraised value, but not in Tarrant, as you can see there. So don't get me started. They all call it different things, but the only one that you can fight if you want a chance to lower your taxes is the bigger of the two, if that makes sense.

Will Wiggins:

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So how do you do that? Well, you have to understand how they’re valued. And I’ll show you a little snippet here, another snippet, rather, of what is the appraisal, actually, the appraisal manual from Tarrant. And you can see here that this is it. This is the trick to how everything and anything is valued in mass appraisal, what’s standard six under USPAP standards. This is called the modified cost approach. This looks fancy, but it’s right down here, and I won’t go too deep into this, but for those of you that want to push pause later on or watch this again, this is it. The market value is just your market adjustment times your replacement cost new minus depreciation plus your land value. It’s as simple as that.

(Courtesy of Will Wiggins)

So that's what we try to do for our clients, is understand each one of these components that makes the market value and make sure it's fair and equal and at a level that's consistent with where it should be. So that may help you understand, at least computer wise, why it is and how they do what they do.

Will Wiggins:

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I'll say this too before I show you my next exhibit, you mentioned the telephone hearings. And I would just offer that that can be good or bad. I was an appraiser at Travis Central Appraisal District, and every once in a while we'd have somebody call in, and they would submit their evidence and they would give us a call and it'd be on the phone. And I would show their evidence, but it didn't hold as much weight, because I'm there and I'm in the face of the ARB and they can see me and they can hear me and understand my mannerisms, and that was certainly an advantage for the appraiser.

Will Wiggins:

So this year if you are going to do a telephone hearing, I would recommend them to be very cognizant of the evidence that you submit. Make sure that they have it and make sure that you ask questions like, “Can you see this? Did you see this? Do you see what I’m talking about?” So with that said, I’ll give you an example of what we do and provide for some of our clients. For instance, in Tarrant, this is a good example of one of our Tarrant grids.

(Courtesy of Will Wiggins)
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And one of the problems in Tarrant that we attack that is different than the district is this actual year built. See, we believe that the market actually takes into account when properties are built. If it was built in 1950 or if it was built in 2010, and that commands an adjustment. And in Tarrant, if you were to walk in there and look at their adjustments or their adjustment schedule, they would not give you credit for that. They only give you credit for the effective year, what they determine your effective year is.

Will Wiggins:

So in this case, all the effective years are the same as the actual, but that's not always the case. And unfortunately they put most of their weight on the adjustment, or all of their weight, rather, on the adjustment for what they consider as your(effective) year. So if you're in Tarrant that's something to be really aware of. But all these other adjustments most of the times are dollar for dollar unless we disagree with it. And that's really the trick, isn't it? Understand what's behind their adjustments. So making sure that you're able to pick apart all of those pieces, which really come from that equation, is really how you can set this up to your favor.

Will Wiggins:

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Another example, say, in Dallas, for instance, this is an example of one of our Dallas grids. And same thing, in Dallas it’s a little more complex in terms of their schedule of adjustments and what they use. But for instance, in Dallas, if we go in there we’re often looking at their condition and how they call this, Glenn mentioned the CDU code, I believe. And that condition and desirability and utility is this, how they see your property. And we often fight that. But another thing they do is they use an average. So in Dallas, for instance, they use the price per foot. And they’ll consider the average, where we think that that’s certainly susceptible to skewed indications and we don’t like that.

(Courtesy of Will Wiggins)

And finally, as opposed to MEDIAN, they just deal with price per foot in general. And I often disagree with that too. So I think realtors fall into that trap too often in their CMAs and they give a price without making appropriate adjustments (size adjustments). And that's really the trick, is understanding the adjustments that are coming at you and how to combat that.

Will Wiggins:

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So here’s another example of, say, the evidence that we use, and you can just see here that it helps. Glenn’s right, it does help to show effectively where your property is and the ones that you’re comparing them to.

(Courtesy of Will Wiggins)

So with that said, I think that another great point, and you mentioned this, is the construction estimates. One key thing about that too, David, is nobody cares about what it's going to cost you to remodel (per se). And they don't care what it costs you to paint something or replace, if you will, the carpet. Deferred maintenance is important.

Will Wiggins:

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And if you have a 1970 home and the carpet has never been replaced, take a picture of it. If you've never done anything in your kitchen, take a picture of it, and those will help you. But what will really help you is the estimates to replace them or cure the problem, cure the problem. So the point is, don't get estimates about the remodel. Get estimates about the repair. And I think that's huge. So other than that, take a look at your neighborhood values and look at properties that are just like yours and see what they're valued at. And then again, try to understand that adjustment schedule and how that affects you.

Will Wiggins:

And I guess with that, I'd say we do that. We also help, as Glenn said, we try to coach as well, but for me it's about, I would think, let's see ...

Will Wiggins:

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Anybody that calls, we're going to show them just that, the evidence that we had used, and provide that for them. That's the biggest key. I think there's an expertise factor of knowing what you're going up against. Glenn used the idea of, and you're right, maybe it had been better for Garrett and Dak Prescott, but maybe not. He's fallen out of favor too. So hopefully McCarthy can do Dallas Cowboys a little bit better, but we'd like to be your coach too. And I'd offer this too, we even say-

Will Wiggins:

... coach, too. I’d offer this, too, and we even... say this all the time inside our firm is you never know what you’re going to get. On any given day, depending on the board or the appraiser, anything can happen. And you don’t have much time. You’ve got about five or 10 minutes to make three key points, I would say, I would offer that. And so know what they are, know what’s behind them and keep hammering those things. And we’d love to help anybody that needs help and then help you save money. It’s easy to sign up with us. Just go on our website and it takes five minutes. We’ll send you a DocuSign, piece of cake. But our phones are open and you can also go to our website, and I’ll show you here, is a… pretty simple to sign up as well. So if you want to contact us or start an email chain, we have that availability as well. So I hope that helps.

(COurtesy of Will Wiggins)
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Dave Lieber:

Okay. A few follow ups with you. Some of the annoying things about Texas, to me, are the way people don’t use turn signals. Of course, I’m annoyed that the Texas Rangers haven’t won in the last few years. But what annoys me more than anything is what you just showed, is that there’s no standard language for market value, appraised value, assessed value. Everybody uses a different... it’s so confusing and it’s purposely confusing to people. And they didn’t change it in Senate Bill 2. I just want to mention that. I didn’t mention the name of your company. I apologize. You showed it. It’s North Texas Property Tax Services. And you have strong opinions on the way people should pay property tax consultants. Not the way you do it, tell us briefly what your philosophy on paying property tax consultants, such as yourself.

Will Wiggins:

Sure. Thanks for that. Thanks for that. Again, I don't know if you can see me. I don't know if I'm...

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Dave Lieber:

Yeah, we see you.

Will Wiggins:

... I'm not doing something right. Okay. Great. Thanks for asking. Well, for me, it's simple. It's aligning your interests, as we say. I believe in that for all my relationships, right? It's, "Are we working towards the same thing?" And so a contingency based firm or a percentage firm, they're going to work as hard as they can to get you as much savings so they can get paid, frankly. But having been on the other side of the desk, I have seen from my own eyes, the type of consultants that are, say, paid on a flat basis when it's just a one flat fee, right, and they just... there's no effort.

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Will Wiggins:

Of course there’s not because they’re already paid. So I fervently disagree with that. That’s just my personal opinion. But I think that’s one that we take on here, too, in North Texas. And here’s the other thing... and it goes both ways because if we don’t do well then we don’t send you a bill. And that seems to align our interests. And that’s the best way I know how to put it. That promotes trust between the two of us that we’re working as hard as we can.

Dave Lieber:

Okay. Okay. Good. So let's go real simple. Let's assume that some of the people in this webinar have never filed a protest before. So in my simple mind, in my amateur way, I've done it different ways every single year for the past 10 years. I filed an online protest, give them a number and hope they accept it and that's the end of it. I've hired different property tax consultants, good and bad experiences. When I filed for arbitration, basically, the various ways to do it, Will, are, one, use comparable properties from your neighborhood and show that they are similar to you and that they basically are... you're getting ripped off because you're paying more than they are, and you ask for real estate friends, generally, to pull the comps in your neighborhood from them, from multiple listing service.

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Dave Lieber:

Another way that we've been talking about is improvements that you would need to do in your house that you photograph or maybe even give estimates, which I like to do, to show I could not sell the house unless I ripped up the floor. I could not sell the house until I updated the bathrooms because it's 20 year old fixtures, et cetera. Those are the two major ways that I know. What other simple ways are there for the amateurs like me to go in there and do this?

Will Wiggins:

Yeah. The simple way, I suppose, for me is I think effectively that you've covered it, but it helps with photos and it helps to show or kind of quantify what it's going to take to cure something. Understand what's behind the adjustments. That may be a little bit more complex because you might not... a lot of people, it's hard to follow from district to district how they treat effective year or their depreciation schedules, and it's very subjective, or the quality of construction is very subjective. But it is easy to say, "Hey, I drive by that house every day and that house is just like mine, and it's valued at X and I'm valued at X plus a 100,000," or "I'm valued higher," if you know what I mean. So that is very simple.

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Will Wiggins:

It is, look, here's this house and here's its value. What the heck? Or even better, here's this sale and it's close enough to mine. Nevermind your adjustments. Nevermind all this academia about, Oh, depreciation schedules and we adjust 30,000 for a pool as opposed to what probably should be 15,000." Nevermind that. Okay? I mean, it's, "Here's a sale that's really, really similar to mine in size and location, et cetera, and it's a builder, et cetera and it sold for this." So just be aware of that. I think it's going there with your evidence, right? But that's the difference. I can't say this enough.

Will Wiggins:

This is a profession. Property tax consulting is a profession for a reason and licensure like consulting license is for a reason. If this seminar or webinar is, rather, to bridge the gap between how to empower you, then not only get your hands on quality evidence like [Glen's 00:49:39] or ours, for instance, but know what's behind it. Right? Understand what's behind it because the district's going to have it. Glen told you himself, the district's going to have this, is very complex evidence. Try to understand what's behind it and double check for those inconsistencies. Yeah.

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Dave Lieber:

The problem, Will, is that it's very hard for us to find a property tax consultant. In the next month we're all going to be inundated with postcards from companies and people we've never heard of. Other than that, I don't know any other way people can find a property tax consultant. It's just very, very, very unnecessarily difficult and very frustrating. So a lot of people don't know if they can do this on their own. I can attest to the fact that you can do it on your own. I've done it on my own several times. Sure, I get nervous walking in there and there's three or four people in the room versus me. The property tax consultant website doesn't really help the association. The state association doesn't really help, either. So I've complained to the head of the property tax consultants association and I haven't heard back on that. But that's just something that's very worrisome. Let me discuss it before we go to questions, Glenn. Is there anything you'd like to add on what you just heard?

Glenn Goodrich:

I would just reiterate Will’s point about hiring. I completely agree that a percentage of the savings is the best way to go. I know that Will and I, North Texas Property Tax Services and PropertyTax.io, we’re kind of in the same space a little bit. But I like to give credit where credit’s due, and they’re a good company; honest, hardworking, very hardworking. They’re there for months at a time. And I think the percentage of the savings is what makes them hungry. You can also hire us on our website if you’d want the full service, and we charge just how they do. Ever since I got into the business, North Texas has been around for a long time, I was inspired by how they did business when I was first starting out. I’ve kind of gone off and done my own thing and made my own name for myself, but I’ve kept the percentage of savings as a part of how we do business as well.

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Glenn Goodrich:

So I think how they've done it is... I would recommend it. And, also, if somebody also says they're charging a percentage of the savings, make sure they're charging a percentage of the real savings. Are they taking into account the homestead cap value? Are they taking into account the actual exemptions and the actual tax rates? There's some companies out there I see that they'll just charge a 2.5% or 2.7% general tax rate and not take into account any exemptions and not take into account any homestead caps on there. We talk about all the different names you have for homestead cap, but... so that's a big part of it, too. So make sure that they're actually charging you a true percentage of the savings.

Dave Lieber:

Okay. And I'm really on a mission here to make sure that the basics are covered with people who've never done it before. So just so we don't assume that people know this, you file your protest long before the deadline date for your county appraisal district. And then after you've done that, you wait for a hearing date to be assigned to you. Right?

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Glenn Goodrich:

Right. So when you file a protest, a lot of people don't know this, they think they're filing a protest with the appraisal district. You're not actually filing a protest with the appraisal district, you're filing a protest with the appraisal review board. And so some people get nervous when they get this hearing. They're like, "Oh, no. The appraisal district rejected me and I have to go to this formal hearing," and all this and that. No, that's standard... that's required by law. That's standard procedure. So if you file a protest, you're actually filing it with the appraisal review board, and by law they have to assign a hearing date for you. You can file it as long as you want before the deadline. The online appeal systems, I know, are open until midnight on the deadline day. But I highly do not recommend filing... waiting until the last minute to file the appeal.

Glenn Goodrich:

I actually recommend filing the appeal as early on as you can as possible. File the online appeal, so know your evidence. Don't freak out when you get a hearing date. That's required by law. They can still make you an offer to settle the value any time between when you file and when you go to the hearing. Be sure to request the evidence, though, because they have to supply that evidence to you at least 14 days before your hearing. And they can't alter that evidence at all once they send it to you. So it's a way for you to get a look for you to make them show you their cards. So it's very important that you request the evidence. I know in Dallas, you have to do it by written request. In certain counties you can check a box when you file an online protest and it'll automatically do that for you.

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Glenn Goodrich:

But the ARB is not something to be intimidated about. They're going to lower your value if you've got good evidence as a basis to do that. So don't get nervous about the hearing. Even I, as someone who's done it a thousand times, I still get a little nervous. But I quickly calm down when you realize that they're just tax-paying citizens just like you and me.

Dave Lieber:

Well, and also this year, Senate Bill 2 says that if you file a protest, they can not raise your values because you seek the protest, which is absurd to think that in the past you went in to protest and they go, "Wow. We didn't give it high enough. We're going to give it to you more." So that's a really good thing that happened for consumers. We're an hour into this so I want to spend the last half hour answering questions from folks who have written to us.

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Dave Lieber:

I'll answer the easy ones. I think this one from Tom and Pam... we'll protect your last names in these because I don't... some people feel they'll get retribution from the appraisal districts. But Tom and Pam say, "If I protest, we get a lower value for my 2020 taxes and [should] I protest again next year in 2021 if values continue to slide and I say, 'You know what, man... Every single year you file a protest.” that's my philosophy. Because if you skip a year and it goes up, you're paying that high rate for the rest of time. So I would say, yes, file it.

Dave Lieber:

All right. This is from Eric and he has a whole bunch of simple questions. He says, "If we won our property tax last year, do we have to file again next year?" The answer is, yes. Right? "If we have to file our protest this year, will we have to appear in person?" The answer is, no. You don't. You can do it over the phone. And if you don't show up for your hearing, you have a problem. But the pre-hearing negotiations are all done electronically, supposedly, now.

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Dave Lieber:

"If we have to file a protest this year, will it be better to show up in person or use teleconference to resolve the protest?" Will, what do you think of that one?

Will Wiggins:

Number one, I don't think it's a choice. I think telephone conferences are the way it's going to be this year, unfortunately. And do I think it's advantageous or a disadvantage? I think that can go either way. And I point you to the evidence that you provide, make sure that they have a copy of it, and you'll be provided from any given county... you'd be provided the means to do that, to provide that evidence. But circle the points that you want to make. Right? Scratch it up. Here's another good tip from the shark is to take their evidence, like Glen told you to get, and cross out what you don't like. Put big X's on it and say, "This is malarkey," and then use your evidence to emphasize the points that you do want to make.

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Dave Lieber:

And the last one from Eric is, "If we have to file a protest this year, would it be better to let a professional manage the protest for us?" And I know either way. I've done it myself and I've hired different tax consultants. When do people know, Will, that they don't really need to hire someone like you and they can go in by themselves? Is it about their confidence level, or what?

Will Wiggins:

I'm going to answer that the only way I know how, David, and again, this comes from being on the other side of the table. The only time that I felt that I didn't have the edge, meaning as with my appraisal district hat on here, right, so I'm saying the only people that should go in there. In my opinion, are people that understand every facet of what's happening to them, including the law, the math, right? And those are the two big ones. I mean, that's where the expertise takes over. It's, what are they legally permissible? What's legally permissible, and what are the standards that they have to follow? Nevermind the price per foot jargon that everybody throws around. That's all elementary. And, frankly, the appraisal review board members are educated people, the appraisers are educated people, and they're all good people trying to do the right thing, but there's a lot more academia going on behind the scenes perhaps than the layman is prepared for.

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Will Wiggins:

So I say that with caution, but if you want to go in there with confidence and which cases win? do those things that I mentioned. Try to find neighborhood comps that in their appraisals and that are just like you in size and features, et cetera. Try to find sales that are the same. Get the estimates that are there for you to fix something, not for you to remodel something. show them the pictures of that. Okay? Those are your… keys. Use maps. Show them where you're talking about. So those are your big four, I think, to feel confident and do that. Feel confident. Like Glen said, don't be intimidated. The ARB are people just like you and me. They're trying to help you.

Dave Lieber:

Okay. Hey, Glenn, let's take one last question from... well, this is from E.S. I don't mean last question, I mean last question from that [inaudible]. But E.S. says, "I want to know what Ken Paxton... Attorney General Ken Paxton's opinion regarding whether homes hit by the COVID-19 will be affected economically." And Paxton wrote, "No. Tornadoes and hurricanes damage the house. And when the house is physically damaged, yes. But this is economic advantage. Our houses are still standing. They haven't been destroyed, therefore we can't claim COVID." Is that right, Glenn?

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Glenn Goodrich:

Yes, that’s exactly right. And this is kind of important because there is a big property tax firm out there. Definitely not North Texas Property Tax Services, but there’s a big property tax firm out there that is using this as a marketing tool to get clients saying that, “Because you have been impacted by the disaster that the governor declared you’re entitled to this exemption,” or something to that effect; big firm doing that.

Glenn Goodrich:

I should reiterate again that Ken Paxton, our Attorney General, offered an opinion and said that, "No, that's not the case." The reason why this all came about was because of Hurricane Harvey. The process before Senate Bill 2, it was very... there's a lot of red tape of helping people out that were impacted by disasters. A local taxing jurisdiction, like a city, had to request that an appraisal district reappraise every property in that area. And that's a huge undertaking. So they said, "Let's just simplify the whole thing and let's make it an exemption. Let's just do something like, 'Okay. If you're 15% damaged then you get this amount off.'" It's kind of like a homestead exemption, except... a disaster exemption. If you get 25% damage you get a bigger amount off, all the way up to 100% damage.

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Glenn Goodrich:

So it was very easy from the language in the law that Ken Paxton was interpreting, that with the percentage damage, that it was obvious to tie that to a disaster because, how do you assign a percentage of damage to an economic disaster? You just can’t. So that’s why Ken Paxton shot that down. And, again, be aware if you see marketing out there from firms that are trying to use this to get your business. Again, it’s not... North Texas Property Tax Services is not doing this. They’re good, straight... they do it the old fashioned way, get your business, earn it the right way. But there are other big firms out there that are using this as a marketing ploy. Just don’t fall for that.

Dave Lieber:

Good. This is for you also, Glenn. This is from Karen from Kaufman County: "Given that many citizens are planning to protest their property value assessments, are any counties contemplating any type of across the board valuation adjustments rather than deal with hundreds of protests? For example, making a 20% reduction in the assessed valuations for the calculation of the actual real estate tax that will be due."

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Glenn Goodrich:

Not that I know of, and that would be in violation of their values on January 1st. Again, I think there needs to be a bigger talk and discussion about tax rates, because this is what our elected officials are... they're not bound by a January 1st date. They're bound by budgets and things like that. And so if we're looking for tax relief, the appraisal districts have a job to do by law, which is to value a property as of January 1st of 2020. They're not being bad people when they assign you a value that reflects that value. They're just doing their job as required by law.

Glenn Goodrich:

And, actually, if you're in Kaufman County, there's another reason why appraisal districts have to do this. Kaufman County is in a bit of a scuffle with the state comptroller's office right now because they have not been valuing... even though they've been increasing values, the state comptroller does what's called a property value study every year. Basically, they say, "How close are you in values from our appraisals to what you're actually noticing?" In other words, are you noticing people at 85% of their market value when we're looking at it being 100%?"

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Glenn Goodrich:

They've determined that Kaufman Appraisal District is too low on their values. The impact that that has is that the state comptroller can... they're withholding $1 million in funds for the ISD there. So there's penalties if they don't follow through with that that impact the school districts. So, again, I think the conversation for tax relief needs to be more shifted to politicians that decide tax rates.

Dave Lieber:

Okay. Thank you. This is for you, Will. This is from Dwight. "Many of the homes in our neighborhood have been torn down and replaced with McMansions valued at three quarters of a million to over a million. Other homes have been flipped a couple of times with major renovations and updates, tearing out walls so it's the popular open space concept, recessed lighting, granite countertops, et cetera. We have not done any of those major structural renovations nor do we want to tear out our walls to make our home open space. But it makes our home less marketable if we want to sell it, which we do not. Where could I find the costs for bathroom remakes, a terrace foundation lifting, not the house, just the terrace, brick repair, tiling a couple of rooms, et cetera, without bringing contractors since we have no intention of doing those repairs anytime soon? I would not want to waste contractors' time coming to the house to give us estimates since we did not intend to follow through for at least a year."

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Will Wiggins:

Well, great question, first of all. Gentrification is the academic.. Concept in play here and we've all heard it, again. Glen offered that this is probably a well-versed crowd that we have here, so we all know about that, perhaps. Okay. The answers are, if you don't want to pay for it, you don't want to pay for a service like Marshall and Swift or something like that, which is residential construction costs, and you want to get it for free, then the hard way for free is to take an open records request out for the building department. Find out what those building permits are for, maybe figure out what's in your area, for instance, and get the average price per foot. We know like the back of our hands what each district applies these things for. I would say, if it's you, you could also Google. There's nothing wrong with that.

Will Wiggins:

You can pull up this then you can say, "Look, here. Look, board ... look, panel review board, I did a Google search," and they know, too. You know what I mean? So you're not pulling any wool over their eyes. But if you need an exhibit, do a Google search and pull that out, too. I guess the answer for me for that specific question would be... and you don't want to get contracts (estimates, bids), and if I were you and it were me, I would pull that... and matter of fact, you can get the information from the appraisal district as well. They collect permit information. Or you could write records request to the district and say, "I'd like to see all of the building permit information and the building permit value information from my neighborhood over the last five years."

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Will Wiggins:

And then you'll get it back and the kitchen permit for 65,000, kitchen permit for 35,000, et cetera. And there's the size of that remodel as well in that data, too. So that might be the best way if I were a homeowner trying to do it on my own for free.

Dave Lieber:

And so to be clear, you don't need any of this information when you file your protest. Do you need this information when your hearing is scheduled?

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Will Wiggins:

Yeah.

Dave Lieber:

…...In fact, I remember maybe in Tarrant County they actually want you to upload protest info, right? So, I was wrong about that. How does that work?

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Will Wiggins:

Yeah, exactly. All of the districts, and Denton's the front runner in my opinion, or at least I remember Denton being the first doing that share file. When you filed online, you could drop your evidence files here, and they're doing that again this year, and that's going to make it really easy for us to do the telephone conferences and give them the information that we have. But that's it. No, you don't need it prior to the hearing. You just need it ASAP, and get it in the appraiser's hands ASAP. And there you go. Yeah, I think that's the best approach for any homeowner to do that, but I would offer most estimates are free. Most of those estimates are free, and it's good for you to know and you can date it when it happened and get somebody's objective, physical eyes on it. So, I think that's still the best way.

Dave Lieber:

Well, one problem now that I just thought of that we have in 2020, we didn't have in the past, was I brought in Lowe's one year to give me an estimate on a floor repair, and then I showed that that was $17,000. Now, people don't want the guy from Lowe's coming in their house in the next weeks because of shelter in place. So, that's another handicap that we have to deal with.

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Will Wiggins:

That's a great point, one that we haven't touched on yet because of COVID. There's a lot of changes, aren't there? But Hey, again, and this is where I deviate from the tone of those hate mongers in the penitentiary and all this stuff. The reality is those appraisers that work there, in my opinion, are good people. The appraisal review board are good people, and they're educated and they know it. So, if you show them a picture that everything's dilapidated, your oven is avocado green and you've got holes in your carpet, for instance, they're going to know, and they're going to know that most of the sales you're being compared to have all been updated, because it's keeping up with the Jones's in this market.

Will Wiggins:

So, I feel like that's the best evidence. Photos, and if you can couple that with a Google search that says it costs X amount per foot to replace this room or this area, then you can quantify your opinion based on that, then give them a tangible piece of evidence, which is always helpful. But ultimately, it's going to boil it down to the appraiser and their professional opinion and how that applies in that district.

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Dave Lieber:

And that's the point that we haven't made, which is every county has different rules and standards There’s no standardization now for these review boards, but... Okay, this comes from Rod, and I think I want to take this one because this is one of my favorites. He says there is there a way to eliminate the board protest fee? Well, there's no protest fee to file a protest with the appraisal district. However, there is a fee... He's probably talking about binding arbitration. And there was a fee that's approximately $500, $525.

Dave Lieber:

I actually paid it two years ago, much to my wife's dismay. But I knew that whatever happened, I was going to get a column out of it. So, I just attributed it to something I had to do for work. So, I paid $525; I filed for the binding arbitration, and they canceled it and they gave me the number that I wanted. And in my county, they also give you the same number for the next year. So, I probably have the lowest property tax per square footage on my street. And so, I do recommend binding arbitration. However, it costs $500. And if you lose, you lose $500. So, that's the tough part there. Anybody want to say anything about binding arbitration?

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Will Wiggins:

Just really quickly, if you win, it's still going to cost you $50, just keep that in mind too.

Glenn Goodrich:

Hey Dave, on the binding arbitration... This has a benefit, and Will knows this as well as I do, of working in multiple counties, that they all approach binding arbitration differently. I think the county that you're in is a little bit more favorable to taxpayers when you file arbitration, but there's other counties that fight tooth and nail on that. And so they may not make you that offer, and they may make you go all the way to the arbitration. So, I would take that with a little grain of salt, that it depends on the county that you're in, how easy the arbitration might be.

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Dave Lieber:

Yeah, and how do you find that out?

Glenn Goodrich:

Talking to people like me and Will.

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Will Wiggins:

I'll say this as a final point too, Dave. In my experience, I give it about half and half for those arbitrators, in my opinion, of being well versed in the law and standard six academics. I haven't been that impressed so far with about half of them. I'm just going to throw that out there.

Dave Lieber:

So, be careful with what I said because I just got lucky. This is from Dave in Richardson, and he says, "I have the impression that the property tax homestead exemption is a deferral of the tax liability rather than a discount. In other words, the deferred amount will come back at a time of a home sale paid at that time [death]. Is this true?" I think I know the answer to that because I've written about that. The property tax homestead exemption, which no longer do you have to have to sign up for. Under Senate bill two, they're automatically going to give it to you if you qualify for your primary residence. That is a discount; that is a subtraction off your value. What I think that Dave is referring to is the tax deferral for seniors. Once you become a senior, you can defer your property taxes til your death, but then when you die, your estate is sold and all those property taxes that you didn't have to pay, comes back out of your estate sale. Do I have that right?

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Glenn Goodrich:

Yes. Although I don't think they automatically apply the homestead exemption for you. What they do is they have to mail you... Is this your homestead... They have to be proactive in asking you if it's your homestead. Whereas before you would have to tell them, "This is my homestead." So, they're not automatically going to apply it there. They're just going to send you a mail, a certified mail asking if... You still have to respond to that and say, "Yes, this is my homestead."

Glenn Goodrich:

And also, Dave, you wrote an article about this a couple of years ago with the over 65 tax deferral. There's some watch outs with that. You wrote the article, you can probably speak to it better than I can about the mortgage. If they have a mortgage on it, the mortgage being sold, then they could call your taxes at that point. So, the best advice is if you're going to defer your taxes, make sure you own the house outright, and that's the safest way to do that because otherwise, if you're tied to a mortgage and the mortgage company sells your mortgage to another mortgage service provider, they can say, we're not going to honor the over 65 tax deferral, and they'll call all those taxes due.

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Dave Lieber:

Excellent. Thank you for clarifying that for me and for all of us. I think one thing we haven't talked about at all, and we just have to mention this for this video to be really complete for people is... Let me plug my battery in here on my laptop. Basically, this is only one part of the process. The other part is what happens in July and August where cities, counties, school districts, hospital districts and junior college districts, they all basically take that appraisal and multiply it by the tax rate. And so, we're blaming the appraisal districts for high taxes when really we need to be blaming the taxing districts, right? Tell me about that a little bit.

Will Wiggins:

Yeah Glenn, you know, I'll jump all over this one. It's one of my favorite topics, and there's a chain on one of our Facebook posts right now where I'm going back and forth with a guy. And one of the best examples that I can offer is... Here's what's frustrating to me is there was a chief appraiser that had suggested to Abbott that we hold the values the same and how that's the empathetic thing to do. And I was very frustrated by that, really frustrated. And I think most people are confused by that because no matter what they do with the value, the collective value, right, or what we call the certified appraisal...Standard 6 (USPAP), the county's (TOTAL) value, no matter what happens to that (due to ARB hearings/protests, etc), the taxes then are going to be calculated based on whatever happened at hearings (tax entity) and budget (tax entity) settings a few months prior.

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Will Wiggins:

So, even if they hold the values the same, your taxes can still go up. And that's one of my favorite topics that I love to talk to people about. And yes, you can increase, and yes, your taxes may go up relatively, if they increase your value relative to last year, for instance, or relative to a new tax rate. And same, same. They may go down if you drop it, particularly during protest season. But the point is taxes, all else being the same, taxes go up and down as a function of what happens at those taxing entities (budget hearings).

Dave Lieber:

Will, this question came in by email from Pat. She says, for Will, explain again for Tarrant County, what Tarrant appraisal district is calling the effective year...

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Will Wiggins:

Yeah, great. Let me show an exhibit again, if I may Dave? Because ours...

Will Wiggins:

Ours is... I’m not seeing that option here, but I may have to be the presenter here. Yeah, there we go. Okay, so let’s see here. But I’ll talk while we say this here is that the effective year is effectively, sorry, no pun intended, but it’s an opinion of what your age is. So for instance, in this example, and I’ll pick on this 2006 right here. This is the actual year built of this home in 2006, meaning: no question, that’s tangible. You can’t debate that, right? And that’s what we like about using that as an adjustment line or as an itemized adjustment. However, let’s say that they had to remodel or something happened to the property and the district came in here and changed their effective year, right? And let’s say that they put it as a 2010, for instance. And in Tarrant, for instance, they give all the weight in the adjustment line for (effective) age, they would give all the weight if you will, to the effective year, which is this line here, right?

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(Courtesy of Will Wiggins)

Will Wiggins:

So at my firm, for instance, we disagree with that. So we give half of the weight, half a percent is what the district does, half a percent of the improved value per year. Nevermind that, but we give half of that. We give a quarter of a point to the actual year and a quarter point to the effective year. And the point is, to answer the question about the effective year is that basically it's an opinion, and we disagree with them being able to say our opinion about how your property is perceived in age is not as important or is, at most, just as important as the actual date of construction. And that's irrefutable, in our opinion.

Will Wiggins:

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So just bear in mind that between the effective year built and the quality of construction, and in Dallas, the condition, right? So in Dallas, they use both condition CDU and the effective year to toggle value, and you got to look at both of those things, right? But in Collin, for instance, Collin is just like Tarrant. They only look at effective year built. So, it's just an opinion and you ought to be able to go after it. And the way to go after it is to look at other appraisals around you and other homes that are like you, for instance, and make sure that their effective year built is the same as yours, for instance.

Dave Lieber:

Okay. We only have nine minutes left, so let's go through these questions as quickly as we can. This is from Cheryl. And she says, "Since the stay at home order has been lifted by the governor, why can we not demand the appraisal districts hold informal hearings in person? The success rate is much better than the online process."

Glenn Goodrich:

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Well, keep in mind that the stay at home order, there’s still all kinds of restrictions with numbers of group gathering sizes. So for instance, restaurants can only be at 25% occupancy. The appraisal districts in a normal year attract thousands and thousands of people, and there’s hundreds of employees that work there. So, there are some legitimate health concerns of just going straight into, okay, we can show up in person to file an appeal. But I think in the bigger picture, what they want is they’re concerned about fairness is they want...

Glenn Goodrich:

So let's just say that we progress through and we're in July and we're feeling a lot better about Coronavirus where we feel like we could go in person to the appraisal district. The appraisal district is concerned about keeping the same processes for everybody, and so they're going to make a decision about, okay, somebody cannot come in May or June and we settle the case. How would it be fair if we allowed somebody to come in in July, in person to settle the case? So, they just make the decision to adopt policies and apply them out of fairness for everybody. That's my take on that.

Dave Lieber:

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Good. Let me go to Roy. He says, "I recently qualified for the over 65 exemption. Will my house market value increase in spite of that, and what portion of my Tarrant County property taxes will be subject to an increase? Is there still a good reason to protest?"

Will Wiggins:

I'll take this one Glen. I Just can't wait to jump all over this. I find it ironic that the only taxing entity in Tarrant that doesn't freeze is the hospital. So, I generally like to equate that as about 10%. About 10% of your tax bill is still susceptible to the taxable value increase, of course the one that's affected by the limited homestead. But yes, as Dave says, it's always important to protest. And you can always get it below that frozen value as well, so you need to be aware of that.

Dave Lieber:

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Denise wants to know where she can learn about Senate Bill 2. And rather than read this giant bill, which I showed you a moment ago, that I did a story summarizing it. So, probably if you just type into Google, Dave Lieber Dallasnews.com and Senate Bill 2 explanation, it’ll pop up. [Here’s the link: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/watchdog/2019/06/14/breaking-it-down-this-is-how-the-new-texas-property-tax-law-affects-you/]. Let’s see, here’s one from Lohan. “At a hearing, is the appraisal district allowed to change the comps used from the ones presented earlier.”

Will Wiggins:

Great question. I'll take that one. And the answer is, not if you filed your request for evidence. As Glen said, and he's spot on, ask for a copy of their evidence. They're required to give it to you 14 days before your hearing. Once they give that to you, they cannot change it. And that's part of Senate bill two is that they have to show you what they plan to introduce. And no, so no, they cannot. You can never be at a disadvantage. They don't want you to be at a disadvantage. So whatever they showed you two weeks ago is what they have to stick with.

Glenn Goodrich:

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Let me piggyback on that a little bit because Will's exactly right. But again, I want to emphasize, you have to request that. If you go in for an informal and they just show you comps, but you don't make an official request for it, they can actually change the comps at that point. So make the official request just like Will is saying, and then that locks them into it.

Dave Lieber:

Barbara says that she has successfully fought her property tax for the last three years. Congratulations Barbara, that's really great. But she said she did it in person and she felt very successful. "Do you have any advice for me on how I continue to have my winning streak alive, even if I'm only allowed to do online protests and not the personal visits that I like?

Will Wiggins:

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Well, I come back to those three points. It sounds like she's doing great, but all the points that we've made during this webinar are the ones that I would focus on for any argument, any year.

Dave Lieber:

This is from JR; "Why is the homeowner forced to prove a lower value for the home when the appraisal district claims that the value they provide is gospel?"

Glenn Goodrich:

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I don't... Well, I'll disagree with the premise of that a little bit. So keep in mind that there's two different standards of evaluation in the appraisal district. So when they send you out notice values, that's based on one standard that looks at computer modeling. They use aggregate information, so your average price per square foot for similar properties, and then that's how they notice you. When you file a protest, that moves them into a completely different standard evaluation, where they have to look at your property specifically. They have to pick individual comps for your property. So, that's the extreme advantage of filing a protest is that you get the special attention when you file the protest. You get the custom valuation job versus when you do the notice, you're letting a computer that's doing aggregate information like averages, control your value.

Will Wiggins:

I'd only say that they could echo: one sentiment... I hear the tone of that homeowner, and I would say, remind him for me that the burden of proof is in fact on the district. They have to prove that value, so that's a key point to always emphasize.

Dave Lieber:

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Yeah, there's something that you can look up, folks, called the Texas Property Owners Bill of Rights. Basically, it's a beautiful document. It's probably not followed that well, but it basically says everyone is entitled to a fair and uniform property value, and it just gives you all these rights. So Google Texas Property Bill of Rights.[Here’s the link: https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/files/divisions/general-oag/LandownersBillofRights.pdf]

And also, if you want to do some further study on this, I recommend a column that I wrote, which is called take this quick quiz and see how much you know about the new Texas property tax law. And if you just Google that, my name, Dave Lieber, you'll be able to take this quiz, which is really fun, and it shows you all the different things which we've talked about but with multiple choice like the SATs. [Here’s the link: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/watchdog/2020/01/03/take-this-quick-quiz-and-see-how-much-you-know-about-the-new-texas-property-tax-law/] A quick wrap up, 30 second wrap up from you two guys before I read the final limerick from Bruce Davidson, Mr. Limerick. Will?

Will Wiggins:

Yeah, sure. I'll go first, sure. Thanks, first of all, for having me. Thanks to everybody for logging on. We feel your pain and empathize with your plight. I like to hear it from Glen that he's there to help you. We are here to help you. It is more complex. While I don't want you to be intimidated, you may be. We understand that. So, we're happy to exchange anything. We give free analysis to anybody that calls, we tell you about what we think, what we see. Stay away from just that, marketing ploys. Be leery of those promises on those marketing letters. And if you're going to do it yourself, do your homework, stick to the key three points, have your evidence with animated notes and emphasizing your points. And with that, will tell you good luck.

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Dave Lieber:

Glenn? Farewell words before I-

Glenn Goodrich:

Yeah. So, if you're attending this live or if you're viewing it later, you're part of the people that have wanted this information, you've gone for it. But there's other people that don't know that they really need to hear this. And so, spread the word, be a coach in your neighborhood if you've gone through this before. Get more people involved in the process. In Dallas County, I did a study; only 20% of all the property owners in any given year file a protest in Dallas County. Over the past five years, less than half of all the properties have filed a protest. We need that number to be way higher. There's too many people that are not engaged in the process, and so we need you guys to spread the word and get more people involved in the process, and Dave's a great resource for that.

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Dave Lieber:

Thanks guys. I want to conclude by a few things. Everyone, for the future DMN Download of virtual events and other important information, continue to check our weekly rewards newsletter on Tuesday. My Watchdog Nation newsletter comes out on Wednesdays. It's free, sign up for that. [Signup link is: https://dallasnews.activehosted.com/f/90]. Stay up to date on the new developments with Coronavirus, sign up for the Coronavirus newsletter from the Dallas Morning News. Information will be sent to you on how to do that after the call. I specifically want to thank the two people that put this together, they worked really hard. Jessica Cates and Kimmy Hazelwood of DMN Rewards program.

Dave Lieber:

I want to thank you for joining us. If you aren’t a member of the Dallas Morning News, we’re glad you were able to attend. And we hope you will continue to support local journalism by subscribing today. And here’s my final limerick, okay? Written just for this moment. by Bruce Davidson of Carrollton.

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The game plan from Dave, Glenn and Will

will give your appraiser a chill

because you could rinse his appraisal in cinnamon basil,

and it's still going to smell like a still.

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And with knowledge from Will and from Glenn, your chock full of facts for the win,

and wrapped up by Dave, you’re ramped up to save on your property taxes again.

Thanks everybody for joining us. Everybody file a protest. See ya. Stay safe everybody; we love you. Thank you for joining us.

The Watchdog uses this virtual flag for his campaign. After he announced it, about 1 out of...
The Watchdog uses this virtual flag for his campaign. After he announced it, about 1 out of 7 North Texas homeowners filed a protest for their property taxes. The number has grown considerably in area counties.(Graphic by Marina Trahan Martinez / )
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