Everything a Houston homeowner needs to stop overpaying on property taxes — in plain English.
The short version: check whether HCAD valued your home above comparable homes, file Form 50-132 by May 15 — or within 30 days of the date on your notice, whichever is later — and separately file any exemption you qualify for, which is free and does not require a protest. Everything below is those steps in order, with the statute behind each one.
Check your home FREE →Every year, thousands of Harris County homeowners pay more property tax than they should — simply because they don't know they can protest, or they miss free exemptions. This guide walks you through it: whether your home is over-appraised, how to protest it yourself, the key deadline, and the exemptions you may be missing.
If you do only one thing from this guide, do this one: see which exemptions HCAD has on your address. Exemptions are the fastest money on this page, and every application is free.
Each year, HCAD (Harris Central Appraisal District) estimates your home's value, and your tax bill is based on that value times the local tax rates (school, city, county). The catch: appraisals are done in bulk by computer across 1.6 million+ homes — so yours can be valued too high, and you end up paying more than a neighbor with an identical house.
You don't need a lawyer and don't pay anyone a percentage.
The protest filing deadline is usually May 15, or 30 days after you receive your appraisal notice, whichever is later.
Note: exemptions (below) can be filed year-round and backdated up to 2 years — so it's never too late to claim those.
| Exemption | What you get | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Homestead | Up to $140,000 off your school-taxable value | FREE |
| Over-65 | School taxes frozen + additional exemption | FREE |
| Disabled | Additional exemption | FREE |
| Disabled Veteran | Exemption based on VA disability rating (up to 100%) | FREE |
Note: exemption amounts are set by Texas law and can change yearly — verify current figures with HCAD or our free checker before filing.
Yes — any Harris County homeowner can protest their appraised value each year, no lawyer needed.
No. Protesting is your legal right and doesn't cause your home to be appraised higher for that reason.
Yes. A recent purchase price can actually be useful evidence. Run the free check to see your case.
You lose nothing — your taxes stay the same as before. There's virtually no downside.
A pre-filled Form 50-132 plus a comparable-homes evidence sheet from official Harris County data — ready to sign and file.
Last updated: July 26, 2026. Sources: Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, Appraisal Protests and Appeals and Property Tax Exemptions; Harris Central Appraisal District, iFile and iSettle; Texas Tax Code §41.41, §41.43, §41.44 and §11.13. This page is general information for Harris County homeowners, not legal or tax advice. Deadlines and amounts can change — verify with HCAD or the Comptroller before you file.
Two things worth doing before you file. Dates first: the 2027 deadline calendar lays out the whole year in order, so you can see what falls due before your notice even arrives. Then, if you want a sense of your neighbourhood before you look at your own home, you can look up your street and see what HCAD's public roll already shows. And if you are weighing whether to hire someone at all, we set the professional protest companies against doing it yourself, with the arithmetic on a percentage fee versus a flat one.
Each area below has its own page with local HCAD figures for that neighborhood.
Take what the district says a home is worth and divide it by the home's heated living area. That is its value per square foot — the one number that lets you compare houses of different sizes.
Worked example. 9429 Pembrook St has 1,097 square feet of living area and an appraised value of $116,588. $116,588 ÷ 1,097 = $106.28 per square foot.
Heated living area is the measure, not the lot and not the garage. A bigger house will almost always have a bigger total value; per square foot is how you tell whether it is priced differently from its neighbours.
Line every comparable home up in order, cheapest to dearest, and the median is the one in the middle. It is not the average.
Worked example. For 9429 Pembrook St the tool finds 30 comparable homes. Their median is $70.35 per square foot. Their average is $91.24 — about 30% higher, because one home in the set, 9401 Sundown Dr, is appraised at $270.86 per square foot and drags the average up on its own.
That is why the median is the one that counts. One unusual house barely moves it, and the law names the median specifically: a protest on equal and uniform grounds turns on the median appraised value of comparable properties (Texas Tax Code §41.43(b)(3)).
Two different numbers, and your bill is worked out from the second one.
Worked example. 9429 Pembrook St carries a market value of $142,436 and an appraised value of $116,588. The $25,848 difference is the 10% homestead cap (§23.23) holding the taxable figure down: with a homestead exemption on record, the appraised value cannot rise by more than 10% a year, however fast the market value climbs.
163,495 of Harris County's 1,157,293 homes currently show a market value above their appraised value. ⚠ The cap is a separate thing from the homestead exemption itself — the exemption takes an amount off the value, the cap limits how fast the value may climb. A home can have both.
There are two ways to argue a value is wrong. The first is that the home simply is not worth that much. The second — equal and uniform — is that whatever it is worth, it has been appraised higher than comparable homes around it. The second one does not require you to prove what your house would sell for.
The statute sets the test: your value should be “equal to or less than the median appraised value of a reasonable number of comparable properties appropriately adjusted” (§41.43(b)(3)).
Worked example. 9429 Pembrook St is appraised at $116,588. The median appraised value of its 30 comparable homes is $82,294. That difference is the whole argument — and it is made from the district's own published records, not from an opinion about the house.
⚠ “Appropriately adjusted” is doing real work in that sentence. Comparable homes are rarely identical, and a difference in size, age or condition has to be accounted for rather than ignored. The kit files on both grounds, so a case that fails one can still be heard on the other.
HCAD divides the county into its own valuation areas and gives each one a neighbourhood code. It is the district's grouping, not a subdivision name and not a ZIP code, and it is the first filter on which homes count as comparable to yours.
Worked example. 9429 Pembrook St sits in neighbourhood code 1160.01, which holds 294 homes. Harris County has 5,887 of these codes in all.
Comparables are then narrowed inside that code by size and age — for this home, 944 to 1,278 square feet and built between 1945 and 1966. Sales evidence for a home like this may reach back 36 months (§23.013(b-1)), which is the window the law allows for residential property in a county this size.
Two houses on the same street can sit in different codes, and that is not an error. It is why comparables are chosen by the district's own grouping rather than by how close the houses look on a map.