VoxProperty Blog

Certified 2008 HCAD tax values have been loaded to VoxProperty.com. Enjoy!

Certified 2007 tax values, along with ownership information and home fixture information, has been uploaded to VoxProperty.com from HCAD.

Texas is already a bad state to be a real estate investor without a realtor license. Now it's even worse. For years, the Houston Association of Realtors (HAR) has released sales data annually to HCAD. No more. Below is an e-mail exchange I had with HCAD on the matter:

From: Morgan Brown [mailto:morganpbrown@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, April 05, 2008 7:22 PM
To: pdata
Subject: Are you releasing HAR sales data anymore?

Hi,

Could you please tell me if HCAD is still releasing sales data from the HAR? And if so, when will the 2007 sales be released?

Thanks,
Morgan

------------------------------------------------------

Dear Sir or Madam:

No.

HB 2188, a new Texas law that became effective June 18, 2007, makes confidential any information about properties that an appraisal district obtained from private sources. Because of this change in law, we are no longer able to display on this website property sales information we have obtained from private sources.

If you file for a protest online, sales & evidence HCAD uses should be available online about 15-20 days before hearing date.

For more information about online protest filing, please go to http://www.hcad.org/pdf/ifile_faq.pdf

Thank you,

HCAD Webmaster

Funny--they'll put sales data online if you're protesting your taxes, but they won't put sales data online. ??? We here at VoxProperty.com suggest you call your local congressman and congratulate him or her for keeping Texas in the real estate dark ages.

A new Houston RE-oriented blog has appeared, SwampLot. It seems to be focused on inside-the-Loop projects and properties, both commercial and residential. Always an interesting read, with lots of photos. Gives you an inside view of many places you might not see otherwise.

You may have heard that the recent sales price disclosure bill failed to pass the Texas Legislature. While the main focus of the discussion has centered on the (theoretical) effect of sales disclosure on property tax assessments, the defeat of the bill affects automatic valuation sites, such as Zillow, and yes, VoxProperty.com.

At VoxProperty, our "MoBro" comparative sales tool uses residential sales data released annually from MLS, which the Houston Association of Realtors is not required to release, but does anyway. Unfortunately, the data is a trailing indicator of market value. VoxProperty is unique in that we solicit unrecorded sales and market value predictions from users, which in theory makes our predictions more timely than (for instance) Zillow's.

So you have two choices: lobby your State Legislator to resurrect the sales disclosure bill, or encourage all your friends to make market value predictions at VoxProperty.com!

Happy first birthday to VoxProperty.com! This baby had her first birthday recently. It's been an interesting year, with lots of useful real estate valuation tools added. Thanks go out to our 230 registered members!

In other news, VoxProperty.com has been updated with 2007 assesment and sales data from Harris County Appraisal District (HCAD). Although not required to do so by law, HCAD releases sales data once per year. Unfortunately, the most recent sales date from around January, 2007. But if you know of a sale that has occured more recently, feel free to add it to our database.

Thanks to the staff of HoustonRealNews for some fantastic press!