A DFW Homeowner's Pre-Season Checklist: September Through March
Notices start arriving the first week of April and the clock is already running by the time most homeowners open one. Everything on this list is easier to do now, months before the deadline is visible on a calendar.
Almost everything that makes a protest strong — the exemption on file, the condition evidence, the comp research — is easier to gather in the fall than in the two weeks before the deadline, when a district office is at its busiest and a contractor's calendar is at its fullest. None of it requires a notice in hand to start.
Confirm the homestead exemption is actually on file
Section 11.13 requires an application before the exemption applies, and the general deadline under Section 11.43(d) is April 30 of the tax year. A new owner who missed that window is not out of options: Section 11.431 requires the chief appraiser to accept a late homestead application filed up to two years after the delinquency date, with the tax on the exempted amount refunded or credited once it is approved. Check the exemption line on last year's notice, or the district's online account lookup, rather than assuming closing paperwork took care of it.
Gather condition evidence now
Photographs of foundation cracks, roof wear, or drainage problems, a contractor's written repair estimate, and any engineering or foundation report are all stronger the closer they are to contemporaneous — and all easier to schedule in the fall or winter than in April, when repair contractors are booked out and the district's own evidence deadlines are close behind the notice.
Date-stamp what is gathered and keep the underlying paperwork, not just a summary of it. A repair estimate is stronger with the contractor's letterhead and license number attached than as a verbal number relayed secondhand, and a foundation report is stronger as the report itself than as a homeowner's paraphrase of what it said. None of this needs to be organized into a formal packet yet — the point in the fall is simply to have it exist, dated, before a deadline makes gathering it rushed.
Check last year's value against your neighbors
Pull the appraised value and price per square foot on a handful of comparable houses nearby — both ones that sold recently and ones that did not — using the district's public property search. A gap between your assessed figure and theirs, adjusted for real differences in size, age, and condition, is exactly the equity argument Section 41.43(b)(3) is built around, and it is far easier to build without a deadline pressing.
Keep the list to houses that are genuinely comparable in age, size, and construction — a large adjustment on a comp is a weakness to be explained, not a data point to pad the set with. Note the account number for each one while looking it up; re-finding the same comps in April, on a district site slowed by protest-season traffic, is a worse use of that week than doing it once now.
Watch the notice-mailing timeline
Section 25.19 requires a homestead notice by April 1, or as soon after as practicable, and other property by May 1. The protest deadline under Section 41.44 is May 15 or 30 days after that mailing, whichever is later — so the mailing date, once the notice arrives, sets the real clock more precisely than the calendar does.
Sign an agent authorization early
An agent authorization under Comptroller Form 50-162 can be signed before a notice ever arrives, so that filing happens the same day the value is published rather than whenever a homeowner next has a free afternoon in April. A properly structured engagement charges a quarter of the first year's realised savings, and nothing at all — no reduction, no fee — if the protest does not produce one.
Calendar May 15
Section 41.44 sets the deadline at May 15 or 30 days after the notice was mailed, whichever is later. There is no late protest and no exception for having been busy — mark the date now, before there is a notice to lose track of.
- September–October: confirm the homestead exemption on file; start pulling comps.
- November–January: photograph condition issues; get a contractor's repair estimate while calendars are open.
- February: request any missing documents (survey, foundation report) with time to spare.
- March: sign an agent authorization, or set a reminder to file the moment the notice arrives.
- April: notices arrive — file online immediately; add evidence to the file afterward.
- May 15 (or 30 days after mailing, whichever is later): the deadline. Confirm the filing was received.
See what your county has you down for
One address, no account, no card. We check the comps and the homestead cap and tell you whether a protest would move your bill at all.
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