Key Highlights
- Austin Board of Realtors provided muscle in legal dispute with Travis Central Appraisal District TCAD) concerning reappraisal contract for 2021
- New contract with Carahsoft Technology Corporation and TransUnion approved/signed by TCAD for data to be used for Austin home reappraisals
- Please note that this is a corrected revision of a post published in October.
Residential properties are more than homes…based upon their appraisal values, homes are also property tax revenue for cities and counties throughout the US. Without accurate market data and sales prices, appraisers simply cannot provide proper and accurate property values upon which to base property taxes.
Texas, being one of 12 non-disclosure states in the US, simply doesn’t make real estate sales prices and market data available to the public. The result? Third party vendors have to provide that information and that information is considered to be proprietary. Agents, appraisers, and property tax specialists in Travis County’s Austin, one of the hottest residential markets in the country, has had to rely on third-party vendors for years to get access to this proprietary information.
In 2018, the Travis County Appraisal District (TCAD) contracted with the real estate data firm CoreLogic to provide that market data in order for that data to be used for upcoming reappraisals. There was a problem however. The data provided by CoreLogic was considered to be both incorrect and incompatible with property valuations from other property valuation websites such as Zillow.
The result of the faulty data? The Austin Board of Realtors filed a lawsuit against CoreLogic as CoreLogic did not provide correct sales market data for which it had been contracted by the TCAD.
The TCAD has since identified and contracted with a new market data source, Carahsoft Technology Corporation and TransUnion, on which the city/county can now rely for accurate appraisals. Just as the Austin Board of Realtors data, the Carahsoft and TransUnion data is proprietary. Travis County will purchase its data via the state of Texas.
TCAD Chief Appraiser Marya Crigler said, “…We’ll be able to recalibrate our appraisal models for 2021.”
Bruce Elfant, Travis County Tax Assessor-Collector and Voter Registrar as well as a member of the TCAD board, seconded Crigler’s endorsement by saying that the Carahsoft product “…is a better product – and it’s not a product that will get yanked from us.”
Homeowners in Travis County can expect to receive 2021 appraisal notices “around April next year.”
Thanks to austonia.com.
(Again, this is a corrected revision of a post that originally communicated wrong information which was published in October.)
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