Fort Bend County landowners – many of whom were irate over appraisals and property taxes that shot up in 2008 despite a dismal national real estate market – need to get ready for more of the same this year.
Fort Bend County Judge Bob Hebert said “preliminary numbers” he saw in a recent report from the Houston Association of Realtors showed home prices in Fort Bend are up 7% to 8%, and he anticipates total property value in the county, as of Jan. 1, 2009, could have increased by 8% to 10% over the previous year.
The implication is that appraisals by the Fort Bend County Central Appraisal District could be expected to rise by a like amount, causing property taxes to float up along with them.
That might be good news for county and city governments and school districts, all of which receive the bulk of their revenue from property taxes.
But it isn’t likely to sit well with property owners, whose tax bill climbed an average of 13% on the residential side and a whopping 30% on the commercial side in 2008, during the start of a major recession.
“We’re not going to be in the 12% to 13% range,” like 2008, Hebert said Wednesday. However, “we’re going to have good values this year.”
While the HAR numbers the judge referred to indicate home prices in the county were up as of Jan. 1, 2009, that information seems to conflict with real estate data compiled by the Texas A & M University Real Estate Center.
TAMU figures show that the average price for a home sold in Fort Bend County in January 2008 was $205,200. The average sales price for a home sold in the county during January 2009 was $190,900. That represents a drop of $14,300 – or about a 7% decline.
Similarly, the median price of a Fort Bend County home sold in January 2008 was $171,200, while the median price in January 2009 was $160,900 – more than $10,000 less, according to the TAMU figures.
And in Houston, according to HAR’s own numbers, the average sales price for a single-family home sold in January 2009 – $164,922 – dropped 12.8% from January 2008, when the average price was $189,143.
Ben – I’m not sure HAR has an interest in keeping prices high, as obvious as that might seem to some. Sales prices are sales prices, reflective of market value. But maybe you think HAR is part of the grand conspiracy to raise taxes too. Are individual real estate agents lying to themselves and to their colleagues when they report the actual sales price of a property? If you have some actual, you know, evidence of such a thing, I for one (and probably the Texas Attorney General ) would like to see it.
I would like to go on the record offering to sell my house to Fort Bend County or any other interested parties for the new appraised value when the new numbers come out.
There is no way I could sell my house for what they say it is worth on the open market and that is a fact.
Perhaps the only way to keep these folks honest is to force them to put their money where their mouth’s are!
its easier to tax than to tighten the belt. I think its terrible that in these economic down times they are thinking of raising taxes.