My name is Joel, and I founded EZPropTax in 2023 because I was angry. I bought a property in the heart of property tax darkness – Texas – at the end of 2021. Everything seemed fine, until April 2022 came and I got my first property bill. I was shocked!
It was 42.8% higher than what I had paid for my property just 2 months prior. Having a finance background and an MBA, I knew that I could fight it, but it took work. I studied the process (for which there is surprisingly little information) and then the financial logic behind the real estate valuations by the county. I even bought an assessor’s handbook to see how they did things, and it confirmed my suspicions – the county was not doing things the ideally “right” way, which is in-person visits comparing properties all around. Still – the first time I did it, things were un-organized because I hadn’t yet outlined a plan of attack. I thought that surely, just having the basic numbers and showing the county that their valuation was far above what I actually paid (the market value) was enough.
No dice! My informal meeting was a disaster. They did not really compromise at all, claiming that some particulars of my sale meant that they could essentially put whatever price they wanted. At this point, I got mad. I was working, taking care of my 93-year old grandma while my parents were away, and instead of spending time with her, I now had to deal with this unbelievable nonsense from the county.
Well, I decided that I was going to have my say at the review board. So I spent upwards of 80 hours in total preparing. I created a comparable chart of houses in Excel, adjustments for improvements, etc – the works – as well as multiple arguments. The more I prepared, the angrier I got; sure, I could stop at any point, but I had to win!
I did win; the arguments were convincing enough that with a bit of luck, the board even lowered my figure below the sale price! I shaved roughly $200K off the county’s valuation – a savings of almost $4K annually in actual taxes!
The thing was – I was happy to win – but I was NOT so happy to spend all this time. That got me thinking about how to do things better, which led to EZPropTax – I could just automate the process so that instead of spending 80-100 hours, I could spend just 2-3 hours a property and present an even stronger case – and here you see the result! Looking forward to seeing how the board meeting goes this year.