 I assume that the audience is. Predominantly Hispanic speaking or so everything I say Ricardo should translate into Spanish. Yes, we'll go ahead and get started. Good evening. I'm your community engagement liaison with the city of Fort Worth. And I want to thank you all for. Joining us for this virtual workshop as a part of the city is. Of Fort Worth's 4th neighborhood improvement project and this workshop would normally be held in person. But at this time, we're doing it. All of the workshops virtually through WebEx and Facebook live to help maintain. And social distancing I also want to thank the last family of the Rosemont neighborhood association for allowing us to be able to use their platform through Facebook live. To be able to reach as many neighbors as we can. And this evening's workshop is on property taxes and you will hear from Jeff Law. He's the chief appraiser from the Tarrant County appraisal district. If at any point you have any questions, please use the chat function of your own WebEx or on the comment section below the Facebook live. Good evening. I'm Ruth. I'm a community integration liaison with the city of Fort Worth and I want to thank you all for joining us in this virtual workshop as part of the 4th neighborhood improvement project of the city of Fort Worth. This workshop would normally be held in person, but at this time we're doing all of the workshops virtually through WebEx and Facebook live to help maintain social distancing. I also want to thank the neighborhood association for allowing us to use their platform through Facebook live to help maintain social distancing. This evening's workshop will be on property taxes and you will hear from Jeff Law, the chief appraiser from the Tarrant County appraisal district. If at any point you have any questions, please use the chat function of your own WebEx or on the comment section below the Facebook live. So, Jeff, you can take it away. All right. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. My name is Jeff and I have my colleague Ricardo here. I'll let you interpret. Yes, and we are here to talk to you guys about some property tax issues, mainly two different points, appraisal notices and exemptions. We are here to talk about property taxes, normally exemptions, and then property taxes when we send the blue paper every year. All right. In April, actually, and usually around April the 15th, every year, like the 15th of April, we send out a notice of a crazy value that's required by state law. These appraisal notices are intended to provide property owners with an idea of what the appraisal district has appraised their property for for the coming year. Due to COVID-19 this year, we didn't get our notices of appraised value out until May the 1st. The notice of appraised value gave property owners the opportunity to review their value and protest that value if necessary. This year, the deadline for filing a protest was June the 1st, which has obviously passed. Most people file a protest for the process or the purpose of getting their property value possibly lowered and which might lower their property taxes. Now, the property tax code or state law requires appraisal districts to appraise property at their market value. The definition of market value for residential homes and other properties is the price at which the property would sell for. So our goal each and every year is to appraise property at what they would sell for based upon January 1st of that year. So with that in mind, people have an appraised value and they can protest if necessary if they believe the value is too high, but the next thing that a person can do to have their property taxes lowered is looking into exemptions. There are several types of exemptions that I'll talk about tonight, but the three most common are the residential homestead exemption, the over 65 homestead exemption, and the disabled persons homestead exemption. For example, a residential homestead exemption for the city of Fort Worth is 20% of the value of the home. For example, a residential homestead exemption for the city of Fort Worth is 20% of the value of the home. So for example, if your home is valued at $100,000, when you apply for a residential homestead exemption, 20% of that value can be exempted or $20,000. So instead of paying tax on $100,000 of value, you would only pay tax for the city purposes of $80,000. For example, if your home is valued at $100,000, when you apply for a residential homestead exemption, you would only pay tax for the city of Fort Worth. So how do you qualify for a residential homestead exemption? The first thing you have to do is own the home as of January the 1st. This home has to be your primary residence, and your address on your driver's license has to match the location address of the property. If you own more than one property, you can only have one homestead in the state of Texas. I highly encourage anyone that owns a home that doesn't have a homestead exemption to go out and come to the appellate. You can't come to the appraiser's home. Just call us. If you bought your home on January the 1st or before, let me respect that. If you bought your home on or before January the 1st of 2018, you may be able to go back two years and get a homestead for 2018, 2019, and 2020. A homestead exemption will also be applied to your school taxes as well. A homestead exemption will also be applied to your school taxes as well. For Fort Worth ISD, this bank requires them to give a $25,000 exemption. So back to the example, if your home is worth $100,000, $25,000 can be exempted so you can only pay tax for $75,000. For example, if your home is worth $100,000, $25,000 can be exempted so you can only pay tax for $75,000. Now I'd like to talk about the over 65 exemption. To qualify for this exemption you have to be at least age 65 or older. The year in which you turn 65, you can qualify for this exemption. We recommend that you contact the appraisal district after your 65th birthday. To give you an exemption of the benefits of this exemption, the city of Fort Worth offers a $40,000 exemption for individuals age 65 or older. So the exemption for the older 65 in the city of Fort Worth will give you $40,000. So again, if the house is worth $100,000, you can give an exemption for the older 65 and they give you $40,000. And the house that will give you the value that you are going to get will also give you $50,000. So you did $100,000 minus $20,000. Okay. So to translate that to the school district, so that would be the exemptions for the city. The school district also gives an exemption for over 65. And that exemption amount for Fort Worth is $10,000 in this example. I'd also like to talk about an exemption for disabled individuals. There may not be an exemption for disabled individuals. To qualify for a disability exemption, a person has to be receiving social security disability benefits. The exemptions for disability are very, very similar to the exemptions for the over 65. An exemption for disabled individuals is as similar to the exemptions for the over 65. For Fort Worth ISD, you would get a $10,000 exemption for being disabled. For Fort Worth schools, you would get another $10,000 exemption for being disabled. For the city of Fort Worth, they also give a $40,000 exemption for people that are disabled. I'll share my screen for just a second to give you an idea of where you can go and find this information on our Tarrant Appraisal District website. Bear with me one second. I want to learn about the video on the internet so you can see the tax rates of the city and the schools. This is the Tarrant Appraisal District website. This is our website in Tarrant Appraisal District. You can find it at www.cad.org in this address bar. You can find it at www.cad.org. When you get here, go to Resources, scroll down to Race, and then you can open up the 2019 tax rate. The 2020 tax rates have not been entered at this time. Click on the 2019 tax rate, and this screen will pop up. If you scroll down, you can see the city of Fort Worth tax rate. You can see the name of the city of Fort Worth tax rate. The city of Fort Worth tax rate is the city of Fort Worth tax rate. Up at the top, we show the different exemptions. HSI stands for Homestead. 065 stands for the over 65 disabled person of the D.T. Up at the top, we show the local option. HSI stands for Homestead. 065 stands for the over 65 disabled person of the D.T. The D.T. is for the disabled person of the D.T. You can see here that for a homestead exemption in the city of Fort Worth, it's a 20% exemption. For people aged 65 or older, it's a $40,000 exemption. And for people that are disabled, it's a $40,000 exemption. For the city of Fort Worth, it's a 20% exemption. For people aged 45 or older, it's a $40,000 exemption. You can see here that for a homestead exemption, it's a $25,000 exemption. For over 65, it's $10,000. And for disabled persons, it's $10,000. So otra vez para escuelas de Fort Worth, para el homestead exemption, te da un descuento de 25,000, por uno que tiene mayor de 75,000, y para uno que sea descuitado, es 10,000 otra vez. We'll stop sharing my screen here for a minute. Okay, so that is addressing the homestead exemption, the over 65, and the disabled person. There's another very good benefit with regards to having an over 65 exemption or a disabled person exemption. Eso son hablando de todos los descuentos y las decisiones que pueden, y por eso que no pueden hablar para ver qué colícana y cuáles, él va a hablar de que hay más beneficios para los que tienen mayor de 75, o el indecuizado. If you're over 65 and you're disabled, you can only have one of the exemptions. You don't get both. So you have to apply for the over 65 exemption or you have to make a choice and apply for the disabled person exemption. Eso serán las leyes donde si uno tiene mayor de 75 y también está descuitado, ahora sí, en el instituto van a ser que tienes que llegar a uno de los dos. No puede hacer los dos descuentos. And if you're not sure which one to apply for, you can call our office and we'll help you. Si no sabes cuál es la vez que les garrar, puedes hablar con nosotros y te ayudamos a ver cuál te va a ayudar más. So the big benefit with having an over 65 or a disabled person exemption is the benefit called a tax ceiling. El mejor del mayor de 75 y está descuitado es que da un cielo para que uno pueda pagar en los impuestos. To give you an example, let's say you have a $100,000 house. Por ejemplo, uno tiene el valor de casa de 100.000 and you apply for a residential homestead but we'll talk about the city of Fort Worth only right now. So you apply for a residential homestead, you get 20% off which is $20,000 and an additional $40,000 off. Vamos a decir nomás por la ciudad forward porque ahí donde está el barro, uno tiene el valor de 100.000 y cualifica por el inserción de la casa del homestead y luego por el mayor de 25 se va a quitar 20% desde el 20.000 y luego el mayor de 25 es 40.000 y la gente va a quitar 20.000. So instead of paying taxes on $100,000 you're only going to pay taxes on $40,000. So no, uno no va a pagar los impuestos de 100.000 y vas a pagar los impuestos en 40.000. Once we take the $40,000 taxable value and apply the city tax rate to it we calculate how much tax a person will owe for the city. Ya con nosotros en nuestro papel tenemos un ejemplo que si tenemos el valor de 40.000 en la casa y a ver con cuánto le van a cobrar con la ciudad de taxes nosotros vamos a hacer todo es matemática para que dice cuánto uno va a pagar. So if I use the current tax rate based on $40,000 of value the tax calculation will be $299. Si usamos el valor que le usan en la ciudad de forward que te cobran el taxes por el valor de 40.000 uno va a pagar taxes de $299.000. Once we calculate the $299 amount the year that you turn 65 or become disabled or qualify for detention I should say that would be the tax ceiling for your account. Ya conocemos el todo que uno va a deber en taxes de $299.000 y ya concluye usted el 65 de este año eso ya es el suelo que no puede pagar más de $299.000 cada año. Since it's a tax ceiling that means that your taxes will not increase above this amount. Como decirlo uno no puede no va a pagar más alto de este valor. The only reason that it could possibly change is if you add on to your property. Nomás puede cambiar si uno va a subir el valor de la casa por ejemplo si pones algo nuevo si hace la casa más grande el valor de la casa va subiendo si puede subir el valor que uno tiene que pagar. Add on to your property would include such things as adding on a room adding on a detached garage or another structure like a schooling pool or something like that. Para poner valor en la casa por ejemplo si pones un cuarto nuevo si no está ahí un garage por atrás si no está a parte de la casa pero es como un taller o como una verca o patina y eso puede poner valor en la casa. So when we calculate a tax ceiling we calculate a ceiling for the city taxes we calculate a ceiling for the school taxes and we calculate a ceiling for the county taxes. Cuando hacemos los valores de todo que uno tiene que pagar cada departamento que hacemos un valor va a ser la ciudad de Fort Worth la escuela es de Fort Worth y la Tarrant County es donde nosotros estamos para Fort Worth. Now you also may be subject to taxes from the Tarrant Regional Water District and from the Tarrant County Hospital District. Uno también a lo mejor te van a probar porque la agua on the Tarrant Regional Water District donde va a dar el agua y también en el hospital de Tarrant County donde uno puede ir. These two taxing entities do not offer a tax ceiling so it's possible that your taxes could increase on these two different taxing units. Esos dos edificios no te dan un descuento porque creen que uno siempre va a usar la agua y siempre necesitan el hospital o si uno tiene descuento ellos no te van a probar o no te van a dar descuento o sea el mejor que ellos suben el valor de los impuestos va a subir el que uno tiene que pagar con ellos. So what's important for tax breakers to understand the way to save money on property taxes is to make sure that their value is correct and to make sure that they've applied for all of the exemptions in which they're entitled to. I would be more than happy to answer any questions if there are any. So two questions how would Chad know what changes have been made to increase the value of your property and then the second question is what is the best way to know what the value of your property is. Okay great question. The first way is to answer your first question our appraisers come by periodically doing drive-bys to see if there's any changes that we can recognize. Son preguntas muy buenas y él es el jefe el menos jefe So él tenemos unos que trabajan abajo de él que cada año tenemos que manejar y hablar los áreas los barrios donde uno vive para decir hay cambios en las áreas y si van subiendo o bajando un preso o las lentes y se van mejorando las casas. If a property owner has added on to their property and has taken out a building permit with the city of Fort Worth we will get that building permit and we will come by and to see what additions have been made. A veces muchas personas cuando ponen algo en la carta ganan un permiso de la ciudad de Fort Worth esos permisos lo mandan a nosotros o cuando salen por trabajo cada mañana tienen paqueles y dicen permiso en qué lugar y dirección y todo y manejan y se pueden ver si hay cambiado algo de las casas y mejoraron algo de por afuera por ser una verca o como un garage. If for some reason the house has experienced a loss such as a fire or a storm then many times we'll get a fire report and we'll come by and we'll remove a structure if it's been severely damaged. A veces si hay a disaster que puede pasar con la propiedad si por el juego o por el umbre o si como una tormenta algo pasó y la casa se cayó o ya no está todo ahí y uno no puede vivir en la casa nosotros podemos quitar el valor de esta propiedad de la casa pero no la tierra y si puede bajar el valor de la casa así. To try and answer your second question how would a person know what their properties were? The first might be a recent sale if a person has purchased a property recently the amount that was paid for it is an indication of what it's worth. A buscar un valor de la casa el primero si uno lo comprobo y el último año o dos o tres años si uno paga puede ser el valor de la propiedad. Another way to know is other sales in the neighborhood if they know local realtors they might be able to get information which would help them find out what other properties are sold for y uno puede buscar las ventas de la área y tienen amigos que venderon casas o compraron casas para despronentar los valores también si nos inclinan algo que venden alguien que vende casas o una gente y preguntar y hablar con ellos por qué por eso se están veniendo las casas en la área. The third way and probably most expensive way would be to hire an independent sea appraiser to perform an appraisal on someone's house. Uno de más cada dos opciones hacer para contactar un tatador alguien que puede venir y ver en la casa por adentro por afuera toda la propiedad y hacen un paquete de papeles que dicen todos los valores y hacen un valor grande y muchas veces ellos cobran 300, 400, 500 dólares para este trabajo. Are there any other questions? Not at the moment but just as a follow up question and if homeowners realize that their property value is lower than what it's currently valued, what should they do? For example are you saying that if we have an appraiser say 100,000 but they realize that it's worth 150,000? Or are you saying that we have an appraiser 100,000 but they realize that their property is only worth 80,000? Correct. The latter if it's only worth 80,000. If a property owner believes that their property is worth less than what the appraisal district has appraised it for they should file a protest during the protest period. If we are going to order the paper for the website that the property value is the most one believes this is the time that one can make a protest to see if we can lower the price of the house. Due to COVID-19 this year our office has actually been closed to the public from walk-in traffic. Due to what is happening this year with COVID-19 our office is closed to the public. So we've been recommending that people call our office and talk to an appraiser about their value. So in this recommendation is to speak our office and we also have e-mail where one can send e-mail to speak with us. I will reiterate though that the protest deadline was June the 1st so it's too late for this year to file a protest. With many people it's a good idea to file the protest on the 1st of June but it's too late for this year to file a protest. If anyone has a current protest that's outstanding we will be setting up those protest hearings in the coming month. If one did file the protest before June the 1st and if they arrive in time the ARD where they file the protest they will file the protest for the public in November they will send mail to the direction to tell me what day we will have to come. Now Mrs. Wendy Burgess the tax assessor collector will be sending out tax bills starting around October the 1st. Mrs. Wendy Burgess she has her work and the taxes and a property owner doesn't get penalized in paying delinquent taxes unless they go past January the 31st. One doesn't have to pay before the 1st in the 15th. Any other questions or thoughts? Yes I think one thing that the neighborhood is there is a lot of new development or urban villages that are going on around the neighborhood does any of that affect the value of their property getting higher based on different development that's happening around them? That's a very good question and the answer is yes it possibly can. One thing that affects the value of property the most is demand. If the development is going on in the neighborhood right now and if the neighborhood is getting closer or closer or closer or closer or closer to the neighborhood right now if it begins to generate more demand for people wanting to move into that neighborhood it is likely that the values in the neighborhood will arrive. So if the city comes in and makes improvements if private developers come in and make improvements if enhancements are made to a particular area which will increase demand for people wanting to live in that area then yes it is most likely going to cost prices to arrive. If the city comes and arranges the companies come and open new businesses and if people want to make improvements if the city comes in and you mentioned previously that one way that homeowners can get the value of their home is by seeing what other houses are being sold for or if their house was recently sold how much they paid for does that affect whether or not they even though other houses are selling for a certain price that would that necessarily mean that their house would be valued the same if perhaps it's not to the same standard. That's hard to say we appraise on what's called a massive appraisal approach to value we don't have the luxury of going into everyone's home we primarily see them from the outside and we use appraisal to do our values. That's not to say because we can only expect all the houses in the area and not all we receive inside the house we can't see everything inside the house and every time it changes that's all we only grab the value of the sale while we make every amount of money and the process that we use we sometimes don't know of all the value details. We want to deliver as much money as we can but there are so many houses and we don't have so much time when we sell houses we will receive the sale but we won't see everything I think the only reason that a property owner would need to file a protest on their property value would be if they think their value that the creditor has on it is too high. If you want to do a process because you don't believe that the value we send is the value out that when a property owner protests they're not protesting their taxes they're protesting their value now value does have a part in determining taxes but they're not coming to protest their taxes. When one does a process of the value of the house one does a process of the house in that one does non common systems that have come in. Can I show you a website that was created? We've heard about that on next door as well. The first thing I would like to say is it's not a scan. It remains West Palm Street. Is that in the Rosemount area? Yes. Give me one second. I'm gonna share my screen real quick. This website here is called, if you look up here in the address bar, it's called TerrantTactInfo.com. And we sent out 650,000 postcards about a month ago telling people that they can go to this website. This was a requirement of state law. This website is TerrantTactInfo.com. We sent out 700,000 postcards about a month ago telling people that they can go to this website. This was a law that we had in the last year. We had to make sure that this website was accessible to the public, so that they could see all the information about the postcards. I put in just an address of West Palm and hit the search button. And these are the responses that I got back. Nosotros ponimos en dirección nomás de West Palm en la barra de para buscar y eso es un todo que vino. I'm just calling this one up randomly. What this website shows is all of the taxing entities that can tax this property and different tax rates associated with it. Este website te va a explicar todos los valores de los impuestos de cada ofcetina que va a cobrar de 2019 y al mejor que van a cobrar en 2020. For example, the first column is last year's taxes. El primer parte va a ser el año pasado y los impuestos. The second column is called the no new revenue taxes. El parte segundo va a ser si no cambia nada de los impuestos de 2019. The next column is called the voter approval taxes. El que sigue va a ser si todo es mal y vota en que sigue un nuevo valor por 2020. And then this column is the proposed taxes. El que sigue va a ser si cuanto uno es mejor o a tener los impuestos. So if we look at the city of Fort Worth here for a second, I'm going to expand this spot. This information tells us that we scroll back up. Last year's tax rate was set at $74.75 para el tax rate de la ciudad de Fort Worth para el año 2019 y a punto de $4.75. Now the no new revenue tax rate, that's the tax rate that if the city set they would actually generate no new revenue. Now the reason that it's higher is because they've had new construction that's added value to their appraisal role. El parte que sigue va a decir el tax rate en el alto que hacen si no va a ser más dinero pero si es un poquito más alto, punto de $63 porque ganaron casas nuevas que consideran que ya puso más valores que pueden conectar. The voter approval tax rate is a tax rate that the state legislature allows the city to go raise it by three and a half percent over the no new revenue rate. The city of Fort Worth is proposing keeping the tax rate the same as it was last year. Now the city of Fort Worth is proposing keeping the tax rate the same as it was last year. So therefore getting el mismo valor del año pasado de cobrar. Now these tax rates are in blue. If you scroll down there's a little note here that says your taxes in blue are limited due to a property tax freeze or the tax ceiling that I was speaking about earlier. The purpose of this website is to alert the taxpayer of what might happen to their property taxes depending on the tax rates that are set by their local elected officials. So this is intended to give property owners a good idea of what might happen. I'm going to go back and pick another example just for illustrated purposes. Here's another example. Last year's taxes on this account at last year's tax rate was about $643.52. If the city of Fort Worth were to adopt the no new revenue tax rate, this property owner's taxes would go from $643 to $736. However, if the city of Fort Worth were to adopt the voter approval tax rate of $0.80, their taxes would go up to $764.35. However, if the city of Fort Worth adopts its proposed tax rate of $74.75, this person's property tax is going to go from $643 last year to $707 this year. This final column is showing the difference between the no new revenue tax rate and the proposed tax rate, or this tax, this $736 as compared to the proposed tax rate, which actually shows a decrease of $28.29. The whole purpose of this website is to show the taxpayer that depending upon what be a local elected official's set as the tax rate, how their taxes might change in relation to the tax rates that are set. This website was required by state law from the last legislative session. This is the first year that it's been published, and I'm hoping that as property owners and taxpayers begin to use it more and more, they will be given better insight into how their taxes are determined. We also have social media that we're using to try to communicate with the property in terms of accounting. Can you tell them the best way to find those particular sites? We're in the Facebook at Tarrant Appraisal District, at Tarrant Appraisal District, at Tarrant Appraisal District, at Tarrant Appraisal District, at Tarrant Appraisal District, at Tarrant Appraisal District, at Tarrant Appraisal District, Can you guys hear me? connection. Okay no problem. Sorry about that. So are there any other questions? No we don't have any other questions. Did you all have anything else to share? I think we have told you everything we know about property taxes, homestead exemptions and things like that. If neighbors do have questions I know you shared your social media but is there a phone number that they can call just for general questions that they may have. Yeah but they can call in on the air area code 817 284 0024. Do you know the expenses for residential or exemptions? Okay when you call in you'll get a prompt. We have a separate prompt for exemptions and ownership and we have a separate option for residential appraisal. Perfect well thank you guys so much. For taking time out of your evening to talk to us. I know that I learned a lot as well and I know that other residents also probably took a lot away from this. So I just want to thank you all for taking time to speak to us and I hope you all have a good night.