We are approaching the middle of the summer (already?) and we're about a month away from the last protest hearing, scheduled for August 7th. I decided to compare 2020 protest results (as of July 7th) vs 2019 protest results. As I predicted in my blog To Protest or Not to Protest, the results so far are... well, underwhelming. As I described in the referenced blog, WCAD gave everyone a generous 3%-5% discount from January 1 values which pretty much eliminated any reasonable chance of a successful protest.
The graphs below show the percentage of protests that have achieved given property tax savings. Here are the protest results from the 5 largest cities (by the number of residential properties) in Williamson County:
Round Rock
Georgetown
Cedar Park
Leander
Austin
As you can see, the differences are staggering. Pretty much across the board 60-70% of protests are unsuccessful in 2020, compared to 30-40% in 2019. The biggest difference, however, is in the percentage of protests that accomplished property tax savings of $200 or more. In 2020, only 10% of all protests achieved to save $200 or more vs 40-50% in 2019 (One exception being Georgetown where 20% of protests achieved $200+ in savings).
What About Your Neighborhood?
Given the ongoing pandemic, and the dismal property tax savings, is the trip to WCAD office even worth the time and the risk of COVID exposure? There are certain neighborhoods and properties that do achieve really great property value reductions on top of the already discounted appraised values!