The case, in the districts’ own numbers.
Every figure on this page comes from the appraisal districts’ own 2026 files for 30 Texas counties, run through the same code as our calculator. Under each one is where it came from.
01
Paid off isn’t paid up.
Pay off the mortgage and the bill still comes every fall. Stop paying it and the taxing units can foreclose and sell the house. You never own a Texas home outright. You rent it from the taxing units, at a price they set again every year.
For the median homestead in Harris County, appraised at $295,763, the school, county, hospital, and other county-wide units alone come to about $3,228 a year. Over thirty years at today’s value and rates, that’s $96,840, or 33% of what the house is appraised at now.
$3,228a year
The yearly tax on the median Harris County homestead, before any city tax. It never ends.
| County | Taxed value | A year | 30 years |
|---|---|---|---|
| Harris | $295,763 | $3,228 | $96,840 |
| Dallas | $331,156 | $3,668 | $110,040 |
| Collin | $521,754 | $5,171 | $155,130 |
| Fort Bend | $402,219 | $4,429 | $132,870 |
| Williamson | $428,413 | $4,348 | $130,440 |
Median appraised (capped) value of homesteads in each district’s 2026 file. Tax from the Comptroller’s 2025 rates for the county’s largest school district and every county-wide unit, with the $140,000 school homestead exemption. No city, no special districts, no local optional exemptions, owner under 65. Thirty years is one year times thirty: an illustration, not a forecast. Counties shown are the large ones whose files carry the capped value.
02
The system expects the estimate to be wrong.
The appraisal district doesn’t know what your house is worth. It estimates, from a model, for every house in the county at once. The protest exists because those estimates miss. In Harris County this year, the district lowered the value for most of the owners who pushed back.
282,135 Harris homesteads protested their 2026 value, 34% of all Harris homesteads. Of the 277,749 protests decided so far, 254,600 ended with a lower market value. The median cut was $26,549, or 6.4%.
Owners who filed on their own, without an agent, got a lower value 86% of the time, against 93% for protests an agent filed. The 547,461 homesteads that didn’t protest paid the first estimate.
92%
Share of decided 2026 Harris homestead protests that ended with a lower market value.
- Homesteads that protested
- 282,135
- Protests decided so far
- 277,749
- Ended with a lower market value
- 254,600
- Median cut
- $26,549
- Owner-filed protests that got a cut
- 86%
HCAD protest and hearing files for 2026, updated Oct 4, 2026, joined to homesteads in HCAD’s certified roll. Decided means a hearing record with nothing pending; withdrawn protests and no-shows count as decided with no cut. A lower market value doesn’t always lower this year’s bill on a capped home: 226,684 of these protests also lowered the taxable value.
03
Valued above the homes next door.
Texas law gives every owner a second argument besides price: equal appraisal. If your home is valued above the median of comparable homes, adjusted for their differences, the district has to prove otherwise or the protest goes your way (Tax Code 41.43(b)(3)).
We ran our comparables check on 500 randomly chosen homesteads in each of the nine largest counties we cover. A home counts only if its market value is at least $2,000 and 1% above the adjusted median of its comparables. In each county, between 32% and 42% of the homes we could check cleared that bar. Harris came in at 38%.
A median test means some homes will always sit above it. That’s the point: one estimate per house, every year, spreads neighbors out, and the law lets the owners on the high side ask to come down. In Harris this year, 66% of homestead owners didn’t ask.
32%to42%
Share of sampled homesteads valued above the adjusted median of their comparables, by county, with a 95% interval.
- Harris38% of 481
- Tarrant42% of 498
- Dallas39% of 493
- Travis38% of 474
- Collin37% of 498
- Fort Bend39% of 493
- El Paso41% of 489
- Montgomery35% of 484
- Williamson32% of 498
Sample estimate: 500 homesteads drawn at random per county (4,500 in all), each run through the site’s comparables check on October 8, 2026. Shares are of the 4,408 homes the check could answer with five or more comparables. Interval: Wilson 95%. Harris uses HCAD’s own valuation factors; the other counties use rates fit to each neighborhood. How the check works.
04
Flat market, higher tax value.
A homestead’s taxable value can rise at most 10% a year (Tax Code 23.23). When the district’s estimate climbs faster than that, the difference carries over. The taxable value keeps rising, up to 10% a year, until it catches up, whether or not the market moves.
That’s what happened in Harris this year. The median homestead’s market value was flat (a change of -0.03%), and more market values fell, 409,913, than rose, 323,708. The median taxable value still went up 0.5%. 100,037 homesteads saw their taxable value rise while their market value held or fell.
775,016 homesteads across our 30 counties are under the cap now. Each one has a taxable value that can rise next year with no change in the market at all.
100,037
Harris homesteads whose taxable value rose in 2026 while their market value held or fell.
Harris: HCAD 2026 certified roll, homesteads with a prior-year value and no new construction (815,939 homes); taxable value is the capped appraised value before exemptions. Cap shares: each district’s cap flag on homestead accounts, counties with 40,000 or more homesteads. Shares differ with how fast each district’s estimates rose in recent years.
05
Where these numbers come from.
Each appraisal district publishes its roll. We load the single-family homes and townhomes from each one, 4,967,317 in all. These are the homes the comparables check can use.
| County | Homes | Homesteads | Under the cap | File |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Harris | 1,149,561 | 829,596 | 16% | 2026, Oct 4, 2026 |
| Tarrant | 594,544 | 416,954 | 14% | 2026, Oct 6, 2026 |
| Dallas | 563,761 | 380,821 | 46% | 2026, Jul 23, 2026 |
| Travis | 343,434 | 244,648 | 12% | 2026, Jul 18, 2026 |
| Collin | 339,552 | 253,428 | 13% | 2026, Oct 7, 2026 |
| Fort Bend | 282,772 | 217,192 | 10% | 2026, Oct 7, 2026 |
| El Paso | 230,383 | 175,629 | 48% | 2026, Oct 5, 2026 |
| Montgomery | 220,628 | 160,785 | 17% | 2026, Aug 3, 2026 |
| Williamson | 207,798 | 158,452 | 5% | 2026, Oct 8, 2026 |
| Galveston | 121,985 | 82,074 | 28% | 2026, Jul 20, 2026 |
| Cameron | 121,298 | 68,138 | 73% | 2026, Jul 23, 2026 |
| Nueces | 108,484 | 69,564 | 33% | 2026, Aug 6, 2026 |
| Bell | 106,427 | 68,639 | 22% | 2026, Oct 8, 2026 |
| Hays | 83,815 | 60,490 | 17% | 2026, Oct 7, 2026 |
| Jefferson | 74,507 | 48,440 | 42% | 2026, Jul 21, 2026 |
| Guadalupe | 58,171 | 41,803 | 9% | 2026, Sep 29, 2026 |
| Brazos | 47,468 | 30,752 | 23% | 2026, Jul 30, 2026 |
| Grayson | 42,562 | 27,406 | 28% | 2026, Jul 17, 2026 |
| Taylor | 42,332 | 26,740 | 24% | 2026, Aug 17, 2026 |
| Wichita | 36,529 | 22,166 | 19% | 2026, Jul 17, 2026 |
| Gregg | 33,461 | 22,153 | 49% | 2026, Oct 7, 2026 |
| Victoria | 22,569 | 15,184 | 41% | 2026, Jul 28, 2026 |
| Bastrop | 22,551 | 14,671 | 17% | 2026, Oct 8, 2026 |
| Liberty | 22,453 | 13,186 | 11% | 2026, Jul 16, 2026 |
| Angelina | 21,808 | 13,908 | 16% | 2026, Jul 29, 2026 |
| San Patricio | 18,276 | 12,101 | 29% | 2026, Jul 27, 2026 |
| Wise | 17,893 | 12,401 | 16% | 2026, Aug 5, 2026 |
| Lamar | 12,620 | 7,566 | 52% | 2026, Apr 28, 2026 |
| Atascosa | 11,889 | 6,984 | 31% | 2026, Jul 20, 2026 |
| Caldwell | 7,786 | 4,781 | 27% | 2026, Jul 31, 2026 |
| Total | 4,967,317 | 3,506,652 | 22% |
Single-family homes and townhomes with a living area and a market value in each district’s 2026 file. Homestead and cap status as the district records them. File date is the date on the district’s export, or the day we downloaded it when the file has none. Sources by county are on the methodology page.
A tax on a home you own, reset every year by an estimate, is rent.
Nobody voted on your house’s value. A model set it, and the protest system exists to clean up after the model. Until the tax is gone, check your number every year and fight the ones that are wrong.