WOOHOO! The Aerials Maps and Aerial Photos are Done.

If you are personally conducting your Property Tax Protest, below are the aerial maps, aerial photos and documents from the Varner Creek Utility District, otherwise known as “evidence” needed to conduct an effective protest on the misclassified components of your property. This does not cover the individual damages to your home that may be used by the Appraisal Review Board to reduce your property’s valuation.

Golf Course

Misclassified Lagoon/Ditch

Misclassified Lakefront

Misclassified Levee on Riverside

Orphaned Property on Ridgewood

Link to the Data

  • Columbia Lakes Data from the Brazoria County Appraisal District:
    Link to Download the Spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel format. (Right click and Save As to your computer)
    Link to the Directory of the spreadsheet on Google Drive that you can open and view a read only copy of the data (Click on link and browse to file)

Back to the website…

I stepped up and tried to get the appraisal district to re-classify all the homes, but they don’t care. I was hoping that common sense could prevail in the presentation I made to Preston Brown, the Deputy Appraiser for Brazoria County but that presentation of facts and logic was not received.

I learned from Mr. Brown:

  1. The appraisal district is not following its own rules in the appraisal manual.  The appraisers have two classifications of Columbia Lakes as a neighborhood.  One of these is “CL.N” and the other is “CL.O”.  This represents Old and New.
  2. There is no delineation of what is “Old” and what is “New”.  This means the appraisal district is using either .93 or 1.06 in its calculations when calculating the value of your improvements in Columbia Lakes.  This is why the appraised values of the new homes escalated faster than adjacent homes.
  3. All of the homes have to be protested to get these codes changed.

You can read the emails between Preston Brown and myself here.

Because there are too many homes that have broken classification records, I cannot do this task alone. I cannot even do it legally. I am actually prohibited by the Texas Occupations Code from acting as a Property Tax Consultant, at any kind of scale.
I have partnered up with Mike Mason from MM Mason and Co. to perform protests for everyone in the community.

https://www.mmmason.com/

Mike has been doing this for 40 years. He agreed to use my data, my research, and my efforts to date to represent everyone for $250 per appraisal district account. I will collect the forms from everyone that wants to use Mike to protest their values and the misclassification of the properties in the community. I will be at the Spring Fling with my tablet where you can sign the form or paper forms to have Mike represent your protest and even in binding arbitration.

Many companies charge 25% of the sum of your tax payment, or 3 to 15% of how much they reduce your appraisal. This is a lot better deal for everyone, especially the 500 owners that have misclassified homes.

You do not have to use Mike. You can do it yourself. You can hire anyone else you want. All I am doing is researching and setting everyone up with Mike that wants to be set up.

Call me at 281-236-2506, email me (olson@webtoaster.com), or send me a Facebook message with questions.