About

What this is

A static map of residential single-family parcels across the Texas counties this site covers. Each pin is colored by how the parcel's 2026 appraisal compares to the median of its 5 closest comparable neighbors under Tex. Tax Code §41.43(b)(3) — measured two co-equal ways, on a per-square-foot basis and on a raw-dollar basis, with the color set by the stronger of the two (the Methodology section has the details). Click any pin to open a personalized appeal report with comps, fair-value math, and filing steps.

It's designed to answer one question fast: is my appraisal high enough to be worth protesting? Everything else — the stats page, the playbook, this About page — is in service of that.

What this isn't

• It's not legal advice. If your situation is unusual, talk to a property tax lawyer or a CPA.
• It's not a guarantee. The tool is an indicator; every ARB panel weighs comps slightly differently.
• It's not affiliated with any county appraisal district (CAD) or any tax-protest firm.
• It doesn't file your protest for you, and the report itself isn't evidence. You still file through your county appraisal district's own online-protest system — this site helps you identify your comps and understand the math so you can build your own evidence packet from your CAD's records.

Data sources

• County appraisal rolls — each covered county's public property tables (accounts, building details, jurisdictions, and exemptions), pulled from that county appraisal district's official data downloads. For example, Harris County's come from hcad.org/pdata. The tool reads each CAD's published files as-is.
• County parcel geometry — each CAD's published parcel shapefile / GIS data. Used to place each pin and compute distances between comp candidates.
• ARB protest + hearings files — where a county publishes them, used to power the Appeals & History page's win-rate and filer breakdown for that county.
• Base map tiles — CartoDB Positron, served via their free tier.

Parcel data refreshes when a county publishes a new certified roll (typically mid-year). Hearings data refreshes during the ARB cycle (roughly May through October) for counties that publish it. Last refresh: —.

Methodology

For each parcel, the tool picks 5 comparable homes from the county appraisal roll: same neighborhood code, same grade, within ±15% of square footage, within ±10 years of build year, closest by geographic distance. It then compares the appraisal against the median of those 5 homes two co-equal ways: on a per-square-foot basis (median $/sqft × the subject's square footage) and on a raw-dollar basis (the median of the comps' total appraised values). The pin is colored by the stronger of the two — a parcel has a case if either measure puts it over the median.

Per-square-foot is the size normalization a county appraisal district's own mass-appraisal (CAMA) model uses internally; the raw-dollar median is the basis the online-settlement process tends to offer on. Neither §41.43(b)(3) nor §42.26(a)(3) mandates a particular method — both call for the median of “appropriately adjusted” comparables, so the tool surfaces both readings and lets the stronger one drive the verdict. The bucket thresholds, the comp-spread math, and §23.23 homestead-cap detection are all computed at pipeline-build time and surfaced per parcel on each report page.

Note that the comparison is relative: each parcel is measured against the median of similar appraised neighbors, not absolute market value. That's the test the §41.43(b)(3) statute applies, but it means the tool cannot detect district-wide over- or under-appraisal — if all your neighbors are appraised low, your “fair” value will look low too.

Privacy

The site has no user accounts and never asks for personal information. Two analytics tools are used to count visitors and see which pages are useful:

• Cloudflare Web Analytics — cookieless, country-level location only. Run by the site's host.
• Google Analytics 4 — sets a _ga cookie used to recognize a repeat visitor within a session. Aggregate page views, approximate location (country, region, city, estimated from IP), browser, and referrer are sent to Google. No personal data, account info, or parcel-search history is sent.

All parcel data displayed here — owner names, addresses, appraised values, prior-year values, year built, square footage — is public record at each county appraisal district, searchable on the CAD's own site by address or owner name with no account needed. This site presents the same data in map form.

Contact

Questions, corrections, or a comp that doesn't look right — write to hello@appealtexastax.com. One person reads that inbox; don't expect instant replies, but everything gets read.