The home on South 12th Street is cozy, but it’s nobody’s idea of a dream house.

Its painted cinder block is topped by aging shingles. The 86-year-old widow who lives there tends the shady yard with its fig trees, agaves and irises planted around a Virgin Mary statue. Her front-door view is a FedEx truck lot and brick student housing for Baylor students.

The McLennan County Appraisal District said the property is worth $271,042 — increased from $83,869 last year — because of the demand for student housing in the area.

Stella Cantu stands in front of her mother’s home on South 12th Street that has been appraised at $271,042 — $83,869 higher than last year.

The family that owns the house is fighting to prove the district got it wrong.

The Cantu family is among some 5,000 property owners countywide who have signed up to protest their 2010 appraisals. The family’s story shows the difficulty of putting a price on a home that’s not for sale.

Twenty-nine years ago, Stella Cantu and her husband, Juan, bought the house at South 12th and Daughtrey Avenue, and gave it to her mother, Martina Florez.

Stella Cantu, who lives in South Texas, has signed up to argue her case this month before a three-person Appraisal Review Board panel.

She said the estimated property taxes on the 0.6-acre property went from $2,325 to more than $7,000 in the past year.

“I can live with taxes being raised a little bit, but more than $4,000 in one year?” Cantu said. “How can you do that? . . . It’s almost like they’re trying to move us out.”

The protest process began early this month, with four panels hearing several cases an hour.

The panel members, chosen by the appraisal district board, receive stipends and typically include representation from private real estate professionals.

By the time the process wraps up next month, the panels will have heard many complicated real estate situations and emotional pleas.

Because of the economic slowdown, appraisal district officials are projecting little or no growth in the value of existing homes this year in McLennan County and Waco.

The number of protests so far is fewer than the 7,000 logged last year, but the number could increase.

Some property owners have not yet reached the one-month deadline to protest after receiving their preliminary property estimate.

Unexpected swings

Though the average home may not have increased this year, some individual properties saw wide swings both up and down.

Chief Appraiser Drew Hahn said the appraisal district this year reclassified homes in the city of Waco to better reflect state standards.

That means a house may now be compared to a different set of homes than in the past.

Big factors in calculating tax appraisals include the location, size, construction quality and condition of the structure.

Those wishing to protest their values are urged to marshal evidence that their home has problems that would lower its market price, or find recent sales information on similar homes.

“We look at (properties) from the outside,” Hahn said. “If there are things in the inside that are problems, that’s something they need to bring pictures of and show the Appraisal Review Board.”

Gathering evidence

Stella Cantu, the South Waco property owner, said she’s trying to collect all the evidence she can to show her mother’s home is overappraised.

She said appraisers explained to her the cause of the upward revision: Developers have snatched up land around her to build multi-unit student apartments, making the land in the neighborhood more valuable.

In official records, the Cantus’ property consists of four lots, and it’s the land that has increased in value. Of the property’s $271,042 value, only $50,602 is attributed to the 1,300-square-foot structure.

“I went in there, and they basically told me there was nothing they could do for me,” she said. “I was in the Baylor bubble.”

Hahn said tax appraisers are trained to base values on the “highest and best use” of the land. That means, in this case, the value reflects what a student housing developer might pay for the property.

But Hahn said the tax bill could have been avoided if the home had been deeded to its occupant, Florez. Then she could have applied for homestead exemptions and the tax freeze that homeowners get on their school taxes when they turn 65.

Homeowners with the exemptions also are protected from sudden tax increases through a cap on their assessed value, the part of the value on which taxes are assessed.

That amount can only increase 10 percent per year.

Also, under state law, the “highest and best use” rule does not apply to owner-occupied house, so the appraisal likely would have been lower, Hahn said.

Selling not an option

Hahn said the family could transfer the home to Florez’s name and get a homestead exemption, or they could sell one of the lots or the whole property.

Cantu said she might consider a deed transfer, but selling is out of the question.

She said an apartment developer offered her $40,000 for two of the lots, but she did not respond because they’re not for sale.

“Maybe for half a million dollars,” she said. “They say these are empty lots. It’s a yard. It’s where the grandkids and great-grandkids play when they visit.”

Cantu and her husband, Juan, bought the house three decades ago and lived in it for a year.

When they moved to South Texas, they turned it over to her mother, a retired department store seamstress, as a gift. They have been paying taxes ever since.

“Over my dead body will she move out of that house,” Stella Cantu said. “She always said she was going to die in that house. For this to happen is crazy. It’s unreasonable.”

jbsmith@wacotrib.com

757-5752

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