The Freestone Central Appraisal District mailed out 9,900 notices of appraised values to property owners last week. Properties where the ownership had changed, the exemption status had changed, or where there was a value increase of at least $1,000 received notices on their real property. Also receiving notices were property owners where the district performed its routine reappraisal inspection.
“There weren’t a lot of significant changes this year”, states Chief Appraiser Bud Black. “There were some increases values in Wortham and Streetman cities due to recent property sales. Black adds “it’s been several years since we’ve made any changes to the land prices in those two cities, mainly because of the limited amount of vacant land sales. But this year we reexamined those costs and looked back at what the sales trends were for the past five years.”
“Ag” values had a slight increase. Black says that this increase is based upon average lease rates for pastureland, timber, and cropland in the county over the past five years. “The value is determined using a state prescribed formula,” Black adds.
Some of the land values of small tracts in and around the City of Fairfield saw changes due to the district’s review of lot sizes and street frontages.
“There were no cost changes. Value increases were driven solely on the correction of those property characteristics.”
Appraisal notices for business and oil/gas property owners are scheduled to be mailed on May 18.
Property owners are encouraged to examine the appraisal notices and contact the district if they have any questions in person, by phone call, or email at general.info@freestonecad.org.
Property owners who did not receive a notice can see what their proposed values are from the district’s website www.freestonecad.org.
The day for owners of real property is May 31 and the last day for business and oil/gas property owners to file a protest is June 18.
The Appraisal Review Board (ARB) will start hearings on protests on July 10 and is scheduled to finish their review by July 19.
Black will certify values to the taxing jurisdictions on July 25. The jurisdictions will in turn begin their tax rate adoption process later in August.
