ECTOR COUNTY, Texas — The Ector County Appraisal District reappraises property values every year.
This year, they used 2022 data to find the market value. The district sent out about 95,000 property tax appraisals to every property owner, and they have begun hearings on property tax protests.
The district has seen about 2,500 protests so far, with a total expectation of around 5,000. The goal for appraisers is to find the appropriate value for property, and they want people to reach out if they disagree with their new property tax.
"That's kind of the taxpayers' responsibility," said Layne Young, assistant chief appraiser for the Ector County Appraisal District. "It's their right to protest the value, so I encourage people to question our values, and if they have a question about it, they can definitely call us, and we'll try to get back with them and try to inform them."
When it comes to protesting property tax appraisals, Young says they want to help people beat them.
“We look at the market, what’s happening in the market, if properties are selling for more than what we’ve had them appraised for, we have to adjust the values," said Young. "We’re always trying to educate and inform the public on the appraisal process and how to beat us. If our information [is] not correct, then they need to be able to present a good case, and we want people to know how to do that.”
The district’s website has several options to find information about the protest process under the "general" section.
Protests have roughly doubled since 2018 in Ector County, but they have been slightly increasing in recent years.
The district’s job is simply to get the values right.
“We are all taxpayers, and we’re all paying our part, so, it is a little bit frustrating when values are going up and people are only thinking about the taxes, but really our biggest concern is ‘what is the market value of the property? Can we support that value?' and if we can’t, then we want to make an adjustment to it," said Young.
Around 5,000 total protests are expected in the district due to this being a typical year for property tax values.
“The increases from one year to the next are not that dramatic," said Young. "Values in Texas have seen a big increase. Odessa in particular has not been as much as the rest of the state. We’ve only seen about a three to maybe 10% increase on different types of property.”
Young excluded mineral values from that relatively small increase, saying that those have seen a pretty good increase in the last year.
As for protests, Young mentioned that the deadline has passed for residential and some commercial property in Ector County, but personal property and industrial accounts have until June 23.