Tarrant County certifies property tax values

The Tarrant Appraisal District certified property valuations last week with little change from preliminary numbers released a month ago, enabling cities, schools and other taxing entities to move forward with preparing 2016 budgets.

The appraised value for commercial and residential properties countywide, as well as mineral lease properties, was $170.6 billion. After exemptions, Tarrant County’s net taxable value is $142.2 billion, up $6.8 billion from 2014, or a 5 percent hike. In 2013, the net taxable value was $128.6 billion.

The number will decline a little as the Tarrant Appraisal District works through 4,090 remaining protests and completes appraisals on 16,068 other accounts. The value of properties still under protest or not completed is $9.8 billion.

Jeff Law, the district’s executive director, said 95 percent of the 65,000 protests have been handled. The number of protests was down slightly from the 71,000 filed in 2014, he said.

“Obviously, we want them to be completed as soon as possible,” Law said.

G.K. Maenius, Tarrant County’s administrator, called the 5 percent increase in net taxable value “very healthy.”

The district certified the roll and sent the figures to cities, schools and other taxing entities late Friday. The figures reflect property values as of Jan. 1.

In Fort Worth, the county’s largest city, the total appraised value was $65.1 billion and the net taxable value was $48.7 billion, a 6 percent increase from $45.9 billion in 2014.

Fort Worth’s number is expected to drop some. The Appraisal Review Board is still hearing 1,634 protests from Fort Worth property owners and completing 6,694 accounts. The value of those is about $4 billion.

The county picked up nearly 198,000 new mineral lease accounts worth about $100 million, bringing the net taxable value to $2.7 billion, figures show.

TAD records have 971,820 mineral lease accounts, up from 774,000 in 2014, Law said. Last year, the taxable value of those leases was $2.6 billion. The taxable value of the leases peaked at nearly $5 billion several years ago.

Natural gas wells see their biggest value at the beginning and decline as the gas is produced, Law said. The number of new wells was merely able to maintain the value from a year ago, he said.

This story was originally published July 28, 2015 at 5:25 PM with the headline "Tarrant County certifies property tax values."