Who protests their appraisal, and for what? (DRAFT – not published)

In short

• About 36 of every 100 value notices drew a protest in 2025. In 2021 it was about 25 of every 100 (our math).¹²
• About 4 in 5 protests in 2025 were about homes.¹²
• Paid tax agents filed most protests. Agent protests more than doubled from 2021 to 2025. Protests filed by owners themselves went down a little.¹²
• In 2026, owners who filed for their own homes got a lower value more often than agents did: about 80% versus 67% (our math). The data does not show why.³⁴

Numbers marked “our math” are our estimates, not official figures. The notes show the inputs and the steps.

How it works

• Each spring the appraisal district mails value notices. An owner, or an agent the owner hires, can protest the value.¹
• Most protests start with an informal meeting with district staff. Many settle there.¹
• If they do not settle, the protest goes to the Appraisal Review Board (ARB). The ARB is a panel of residents. Its members do not work for the district.¹
• A protest can also end early. The owner can withdraw it, or the protest is dismissed if nobody comes to the hearing.¹

What the numbers show

Year	Value notices	Protests	Share protested (our math)	Filed by agents	Filed by owners
2021	255,080	63,220	25%	37,940	25,280
2022	272,015	80,512	30%	49,678	30,834
2023	287,755	79,560	28%	57,447	22,113
2024	294,958	86,190	29%	67,302	18,888
2025	297,248	106,418	36%	82,794	23,624

Source: appraisal district annual report.¹²

What was protested in 2025:¹

Kind of property	Protests
Homes and other residential	84,459
Land	12,314
Business buildings (commercial)	6,123
Business equipment	3,028
Farm and ranch (agricultural)	436
Exemptions	58

• Homes made up about 79% of 2025 protests (our math).¹²
• Few protests reach the ARB. In 2025 the ARB held 5,283 hearings. The value changed in 2,414 of them, about 46% (our math). In 2021 it was about 54%.¹²
• About 13% of 2025 protests ended without a decision on value. That counts 7,622 dismissed because nobody came and 6,371 withdrawn (our math).¹²
• Online filing jumped in 2025: 56,691 online protests, up from 12,362 in 2024. The district says a new online portal for tax agents caused most of this.¹

2026 results: owners and agents

The appraisal district posts its 2026 protest records as open data. We counted them by property, as of July 30, 2026.³

Homes protested in 2026	Filed by agents	Filed by owners
Homes with a protest	69,475	5,046
Share that got a lower value	about 67%	about 80%
Typical cut, when lowered	about 2.1%	about 4.2%

Source: appraisal district open data; our math.³⁴

• Value taken off by protests: about $3.4 billion of market value across all 2026 protests, about 3.9% of the notice values for those properties (our math).³⁴
• For homes alone, it was about $0.87 billion, about 2.2% (our math).³⁴
• This is market value. Taxable value can drop less, because many homes have a capped value below market.³

The other side

• Owners who file themselves may have stronger cases. The data does not show why someone filed alone or hired an agent, so the owner and agent results are not a fair test of who does better.
• Agents file for many homes at once, including some with weak cases. That pulls their share down.
• The district does not define its data fields. We read one field as the notice value and one as the final value. The 2026 season was not fully closed when the data was posted.³
• More protests do not by themselves mean values were wrong. The report does not say how many informal meetings ended with a lower value, or by how much.
• Agents can file for many owners at once, so agent counts may reflect a few large firms, not more unhappy owners. The report does not say how many agents or owners are behind the counts.
• Fewer owner protests may be owners hiring agents instead. The report does not say why the mix changed.
• A lower ARB change rate is not proof the ARB got stricter. The cases that reach a hearing are the ones that did not settle, and that mix changes each year.
• The ARB rows do not add up exactly in 2025. Value changes plus no-change dismissals come to 7 fewer than the hearing count (our math). The report does not explain the gap.¹²

What you can do or watch next

• See how to protest your appraisal for the steps and deadlines.
• See appraisal district for what the district does and what it costs.
• See after the arb appeals for what you can do if the ARB says no.

What we still don’t know

• Results by who filed for years before 2026. Only 2026 is in the open data.
• How much taxable value came off through protests. The open data shows market value. The district’s certified roll would show it.

Questions to ask

• Will the appraisal district post results by who filed for past years too?
• How much taxable value came off the roll through protests, by the appraisal district’s count?

Changes to this page

• Nov. 4, 2026: Added 2026 protest results by who filed, from the appraisal district’s open data.
• Nov. 2, 2026: Added questions to ask.
• Nov. 2, 2026: New page.

Footnotes

1. Williamson Central Appraisal District, Annual Report 2025, “General Appeal Statistics” (appraisal years 2021–2025: notices mailed, total protests, protests by appellant type and property type, scheduling, dismissals), “Property Appeals Results” (ARB hearings, value change, dismissals with no value change) and the online-filing table (online protests 12,362 in 2024 and 56,691 in 2025, with the note on the agent portal). https://www.wcad.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Annual-Report-2025.pdf ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴

2. Our math. Share protested: 63,220 ÷ 255,080 = 24.8%; 80,512 ÷ 272,015 = 29.6%; 79,560 ÷ 287,755 = 27.6%; 86,190 ÷ 294,958 = 29.2%; 106,418 ÷ 297,248 = 35.8%. Homes: 84,459 ÷ 106,418 = 79.4%. Agents: 82,794 ÷ 37,940 = 2.18 times. ARB value change: 2,414 ÷ 5,283 = 45.7% (2025); 1,880 ÷ 3,488 = 53.9% (2021). Ended without a decision: (7,622 + 6,371) ÷ 106,418 = 13.1%. ARB rows 2025: 2,414 + 2,862 = 5,276, which is 7 less than 5,283. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

3. Williamson Central Appraisal District, Open Data, “Appeals” dataset (tax year 2026, data date July 30, 2026), read Nov. 4, 2026. Counted by property: highest notice value and lowest final value per property; “agent” means every protest on the property was flagged as agent-filed. Homes are residential property type. The dataset does not define its fields. https://data.wcad.org/dataset/Appeals/yfdh-r8zz ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

4. Our math. Homes, agents: 46,775 lowered of 69,449 closed = 67.4%; owners: 3,987 of 5,010 = 79.6%. Median cut when lowered: 2.1% and 4.2%. All protests: $86,628,209,514 notice − $83,229,316,888 final = $3,398,892,626, or 3.9%. Homes: $40,173,235,068 − $39,303,780,976 = $869,454,092, or 2.2%. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴