Updated August 7, 2026. Quick answer: you can be assessed at exactly what your house is worth and still win an appeal. 🔴 If comparable properties are assessed lower, that is a ground in itself — and in Texas the burden sits with the appraisal district, not with you.
The argument most people never make
Almost every homeowner appeals on value: “my house is not worth that.” The harder argument to rebut is uniformity: “whatever it is worth, I am assessed higher than my neighbours.”
Texas puts it in statute, with three separate tests, and the property owner wins if any of them is met:
the appraised value of the property exceeds the median appraised value of a reasonable number of comparable properties appropriately adjusted
🔴 Read the direction of the burden — and read which statute you are in. The words above are the district-court remedy: the court “shall grant relief on the ground that a property is appraised unequally” if any of the three tests is met. Before that, at the appraisal review board, the same ground is framed the other way round — a protest on unequal appraisal “shall be determined in favor of the protesting party unless the appraisal district establishes” that your appraisal is at or below the median. You are not proving the market; you are proving inconsistency, and inconsistency is far easier to document than value.
And the assessment ratio is the trap underneath it
States do not all assess at market value. Two examples, from the states’ own rules:
- Georgia assesses at 40% of fair market value.
- Kentucky uses a “fair cash value” standard. ⚠️ The common shorthand that this means “100% of market” is an interpretive gloss, not the words of the constitution or statute — we flag that rather than repeat it.
Why it matters for an appeal: in a fractional-assessment state, comparing your assessed value to a neighbour’s sale price is comparing two different things. Compare assessed to assessed.
What evidence actually works
- Assessed values of comparable properties — public record, and the direct input to a uniformity argument.
- Adjustments, shown. The statute says “appropriately adjusted” — for size, age, condition. An unadjusted list invites the obvious rebuttal.
- Errors in your own record card — square footage, bedroom count, a finished basement that is not. The cheapest win available, and it requires no comparables at all.
⚠️ On the widely-quoted claim that “up to 60% of properties are over-assessed”: that figure comes from a taxpayer advocacy organisation, not a government statistic, and the page we found carried no year. We are not treating it as a fact, and neither should anyone selling you an appeal service.
Before anything: the deadline, because it is the only part that cannot be fixed later.
Sources
Uniformity: the three tests quoted above are Tex. Tax Code §42.26(a) (remedy for unequal appraisal, on appeal to district court); the appraisal review board’s version of the same ground, which puts the burden on the appraisal district, is §41.43(b). Read from the Texas Comptroller’s published Property Tax Code (pub. 96-297, 2025 ed.), because the Legislature’s own statute site served us no statutory text. Assessment ratios: O.C.G.A. §48-5-7 (Georgia Dept. of Revenue) and Ky. Const. §172 with KRS §132.190(3). All read 7 August 2026. General information, not tax or legal advice. Mineral and property-tax law is state law; confirm anything decision-critical locally.