Protests pending From the cover
Diving in deeper
Two-minute impact
Preliminary findings released Jan. 31 show the appraisal district is still undervaluing properties. MCAD and CISD have until August to reach an agreement before officially failing the study.
Jennings-Doyle said one reason for the dis- crepancy between CISD and MCAD values is the undervaluing of vacant land in areas such as along Gosling Road and I-45 in The Woodlands.
Discovered in early 2023, the backlog of homestead exemption requests and protest applications from property owners totaled an approximate taxable property value loss of $8.4 billion from taxing entities countywide, Montgomery County Tax Assessor-Collector Tammy McRae said. “We had to get all hands on deck,” Jennings- Doyle said. “We were pulling employees from every which direction we could, ... and we had to get those exemptions processed.” While the value loss only represents a fraction of the market value in Montgomery County, it caused revenue losses for local school districts and other taxing entities ranging from $1 million-$6 million per entity. Appraisers processed over 10,000 of the backlogged exemptions in the first six months of 2023 and, with a new system, are working to speed up all MCAD processes. However, the release of preliminary findings from the state comptroller’s school district property values study conducted in 2023 found roughly $33 million in state funding for Conroe ISD could be lost if the state and MCAD can’t come to an agreement regarding the appraisal values, CISD officials said, potentially causing further shortfalls that could be passed on to taxpayers. The property value study compares county appraisal district assessments to state assessments to help distribute state public education funds, according to the comptroller’s website. If a county undervalues properties compared to market value two years in a row, the state can pull funding from school districts and relocate it to other areas.
2024 property value findings If the MCAD fails to meet 95% of the state’s metrics, CISD could lose $33 million in state funding. MCAD value State-assigned value Value difference
0
$10B
$20B
$30B
$40B
$50B
$60B
$ 44.76B -$1.54B
Single-family Multifamily Vacant lots Commercial
$ 46.3B
$ 3.78B
-$0.9B
$ 4.68B
$ 1.27B $1.59B
-$0.32B
$ 9.79B
-$0.9B
$ 10.69B
SOURCE: TEXAS COMPTROLLER OF PUBLIC ACCOUNTS/COMMUNITY IMPACT
Managing the impact
a span of 30 minutes. While focusing on increasing the efficiency of the department, Jennings-Doyle said the district is also working to balance needs to raise appraisal values from the state with rising protests and exemption requests from residents. “This is what gets us in a catch-22 … so you have to juggle that,” Jennings-Doyle said. Jennings-Doyle said there are only 95 employ- ees within the appraisal district, which caused resources to be spread thin throughout 2023. “We have one person answering the phones for 360,000 accounts,” Jennings-Doyle said.
While managing the backlog from 2022, the MCAD began a transfer of the appraisal system to a cloud-based server, which MCAD officials said should provide quicker processing of appraisals and exemption requests. “There was just no good time to implement it because we knew what was at stake, but we had to do it,” Jennings-Doyle said. “Because if we didn’t … it would really cause bigger problems later on.” Protest filings began growing for the 2023 tax season in January 2023 as the old software took over a week to process property tax data from taxing entities, Jennings-Doyle said. However, the new software allows MCAD to process the files in
Property value loss
0
-$2B
-$1.15B
-$4B
-$6B
What else?
Montgomery County appraisal protests
-$8B
-$8.07B
-$10B
Despite MCAD appraisals coming in below state estimates, property value protests from residents facing higher appraisals have increased by 50% since 2019, with 2023 filings reaching a record high of 98,238, according to the Montgomery County Tax Assessor-Collector’s Office. “That’s beyond our control. Protest is beyond our control because that’s a property owner’s right, and we encourage it,” Jennings-Doyle said.
100,000
75,000
Highest taxable value loss in 2023-24 Montgomery
50,000
25,000
County $2.3B
Conroe ISD $1.35B
Conroe $1.07B
0
2019
2020
2021
2022
2023
SOURCES: MONTGOMERY CENTRAL APPRAISAL DISTRICT, MONTGOMERY COUNTY TAX OFFICE/COMMUNITY IMPACT
SOURCE: MONTGOMERY CENTRAL APPRAISAL DISTRICT/COMMUNITY IMPACT
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