Rate and Review John B Gaut Appraisal Services

- The question that go - - p2KSkrTKY - 10/24/2015 - comment
The question that goes unskead is how the value on these properties relates to the values of comparable properties in their class. There are often some properties that are overvalued as a result of the mass appraisal techniques that HCAD must use. That is why the property tax code has an appeals process. HCAD takes a hard line approach in its negotiations on this kind of appeal. They would not lower a value without sufficient evidence to support the change. Value appeals are part of the process from the lease expensive home to the largest refinery. These just attract attention because of the high value of the properties.NOTE: You obviously have involvement in the property tax arena in some capacity because you address the issue of comparable properties within classes of property. The question that you cite as unskead is in some circumstances of analysis a valid question. However, in the issues that are being addressed now it is a distraction.The focal point of the current inquiry is WHY does HCAD have such difficulty in holding the values that it has assigned to these mega-value properties. Your position is that HCAD works hard. My position is they fail. My position is supported by the facts.Neither I nor you have answered the question WHY do they fail. My time inside the tent at HCAD tells me that they know precisely why that fail but that they have been derelict in their burden to involve the public in a full and frank discussion of the issues involved in these matters.Further, your position projects what I am sure is an unintended position. Certainly, you would not defend the notion that it is OK for major industrial and commercial properties to be systemically undervalued so long as they were consistently and comparably undervalued.While that may make perfect sense to a technician in the property tax system, it makes no sense in terms of public policy. Defending the undervaluation of Houston Refining or the Chase Tower or Valero or One Shell Plaza on the basis that Williams Tower and the Shell Refinery and Lyondell Petrochemical facilities are equally undervalued is not a defense at all.It is a rationalization that the system is broken. When the system is broken on an $80-100,000 home, there is one set of consequences. When the system is broken on a $1,000,000,000 refinery or a $250,000,000 Class A office building, there is an entirely different set of consequences.Here's the deal. The HCADs of Texas in conjunction with the State Property Tax Board, the Texas Comptroller, and the Texas Legislature have created this gross favoritism for the most powerful property owners in Texas. They scratch each other's backs; they talk about the issues privately; but, in the end, they prefer to keep the substantive discussions about the underlying issues among themselves in this delusionary world of intelligensia they have created for themselves where the rank and file property owners need not venture.Your post does not help advance the football in terms of explaining what's going on in the real world where the powerful property owners are already in the red zone while the rank and file property owners are still driving their cars to the stadium.What you wrote is not wrong in total but it is essentially a defense of a system that is broken and getting brokener' every day and every year.I respect the fact that you signed your name. You are welcome to post. But the playground of this blog is radically different than almost every other blog. There's no free ride from response.