Bexar Appraisal District’s board of directors charted new territory last year when it approved plans to skip a year of appraising properties in which the owner has successfully challenged their valuation.

Broadly speaking, the new policy will apply to property owners who successfully challenge their valuation in 2025. In most cases, that lowered market value will roll over to 2026.

Valuation notices for 2025 just went out in the mail last week, starting the process for property owners who want to challenge a valuation they think is too high. The deadline to file a protest is May 15.  

Offering the one-year reappraisal reprieve was a high priority for some newly elected appraisal district board members last year. But the idea was so new that the agency’s top leaders were still hashing out how to make it work hours before the state’s deadline to formalize its policies for 2025 and 2026.

After finalizing those details at a Sept. 16 board meeting, Chief Appraiser Rogelio Sandoval spoke with the San Antonio Report about  what’s changing, who qualifies and what property owners need to know about the 2025 property tax season.

A one year reprieve

The Bexar Appraisal District’s newly reshaped board of directors agreed to maintain most of the agency’s current policies for the 2025 and 2026 tax years, but approved one change aimed at saving property owners time in challenging their appraisals.

Starting in 2025 any property owner — residential, business and commercial — who challenges their valuation and gets it adjusted downwards won’t see an increase in the next year’s market value unless they’ve made changes to improve the property during that time.

The policy was intended to address one of residents’ chief complaints about the appraisal process: Having to repeat the process of fighting their valuation year after year. In 2024 alone, the appraisal district received 186,000 protests, of which about 156,000 were for residential properties.

Sandoval cautioned that some previously contested appraisals may still have a higher appraised value in 2026, if the property has a homestead exemption that’s kept its appraised value from rising as quickly as the market value.

The homestead exemption’s cap acts as a buffer in an upward market, but the appraised value keeps rising by 10% each year until it matches the market value.

“Property owners have to be very aware that what’s going to roll over is the market value, not the appraised value,” Sandoval said.

What happens in 2027?

The state looks at Bexar County properties and issues its own property value study in even numbered years — creating the starting point for the appraisal district’s valuation process.

All properties are reappraised after the state’s study, so property owners will again need to challenge their valuations in 2027.

The policy Bexar County approved only applies to the 2025 and 2026 tax years, so a future board would have to agree to keep the changes in place.

But Sandoval said the law already grants some of the protections this new policy seeks to achieve, preventing challenged valuations from bouncing right back the next year without a high standard of evidence.

“The Texas Property Tax Code requires appraisal districts to have ‘clear and convincing evidence’ for any property that has gone through an appeal process,” Sandoval said. “So we’ve already done that.”

“In essence what [the board has] done is, for 2025 moving forward, define what evidence will be used to adjust the 2026 market value for properties that have gone through an appeal.”

The board determined the appraisal district will only consider new construction, such as an accessory dwelling unit, or changing characteristics, such as upgrading from a shingle to a metal roof. It can also consider changes that caused the property to decrease in value.

It can no longer consider factors used in the past such as market data or increased sales because of changes to a neighborhood.

Taxing entities respond

When the appraisal district approved its new policies earlier this month, public school administrators and municipal government leaders turned out in force to lobby against potential changes that could have been much more dramatic for the taxing entities.

Instead, the board discarded those ideas and approved the one-year appraisal reprieve with unanimous support. But the taxing entities still worry the change could potentially impact their revenue, just how much remains unclear.

The original proposal sought to apply the change only for residential properties, but Appraisal District staff said its formal policy plan must apply to all property types, so commercial properties and business properties will be included.

Taxing entities also asked the board to delay the implementation from 2024 to 2025 so that it wouldn’t disrupt their budget forecasting, something members agreed to in their last-minute implementation discussion.

In an interview after that Sept. 18 meeting, San Antonio’s Deputy Chief Financial Officer Troy Elliott said it’s too early to say whether the change will hurt the city’s bottom line, but as city revenue has flattened, city leaders are closely monitoring any potential changes.

“We already have somewhat of a deficit moving into 2026, anything that would have happened here would have compounded that,” Elliott said. “I think we want the time to analyze it and see what the impact would be.”