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How to Read the District’s Evidence Packet

Under Tex. Tax Code §41.461, the appraisal district must hand you the evidence they plan to use at your hearing — at least 14 days in advance. Most owners never read it. Reading it is the single highest-leverage move you can make before the hearing.

Step One: Get the Packet

Most appraisal districts now deliver the §41.461 packet through their online protest portal rather than by mail, and only if you opt in. After you file your protest, log in to your county’s portal and turn on evidence-delivery or hearing-notification alerts in your account preferences. Then check the portal every few days starting 14 days before your hearing.

Per-county portals:

The Five Components of a CAD Evidence Packet

A typical district evidence packet has five sections. Different counties present them in slightly different order, but the components are consistent.

1. Property Record Card

The district’s record of your home: square footage, year built, bedrooms, bathrooms, condition rating, grade, exterior features. This is where errors hide. Check it line by line against your own records.

What to look for:

  • Wrong bedroom or bathroom counts
  • Square footage off by 100–200 feet vs your closing documents
  • A condition rating from a years-old walkthrough that hasn’t been updated
  • Feature codes that don’t match (e.g., no pool listed when you have one removed)

2. Sales Comparables Grid

Recent arms-length sales the district used to support its market-value conclusion. For each comp: address, sale date, sale price, distance from your property, sqft, year built.

What to look for:

  • Sales more than a year old (the panel weighs recent sales heavier)
  • Abnormally high or low prices that skew the median
  • Sales of properties that aren’t truly comparable — different street, different subdivision, very different size

3. Equity Comparables Grid

Other appraised properties the district uses to support uniformity under Tex. Tax Code §42.26. For each comp: address, appraised value, $/sqft, sqft, year built.

What to look for:

  • Comps that are uniformly higher than the rest of the neighborhood (selection methodology shifts the median)
  • Comps drawn from a different subdivision when same-subdivision options exist
  • Comps with notably different sqft, year built, or lot size from yours

4. Adjustment Tables

The district’s formulas for how it bridges differences between your property and each comp — size deltas, condition deltas, feature deltas.

What to look for:

  • Adjustments that don’t reconcile to the dollars shown in the grid (internal-math errors)
  • Class-tier rates that aren’t spelled out (you can apply each comp’s own improvement-only $/sqft instead)
  • Adjustments applied inconsistently across comps (one comp gets a sqft delta, another doesn’t)

5. Photos & Maps

Aerial maps and street-view shots of your home and the comps.

What to look for:

  • Photos taken in the prior year (foliage, snow, holiday decorations) — suggests the value was set before this tax year’s January 1
  • Map markers placed on the wrong parcel
  • Outdated street view that misses a recent condition change

Source: Squaredeal Tax — CAD evidence in Texas property tax protests; cross-validated against an MCAD packet observed 2026-05-12.

Bring your own evidence to read theirs against. Generate counter-evidence — $50 →

The Sale Ratio Tactic

For each sales comp the district presented, calculate sale ratio = appraised value ÷ sale price. A ratio above 1.0 means the district overvalued that comp relative to the market.

If multiple comps in the district’s grid have sale ratios above 1.0, the panel will see that the district’s methodology systematically overvalues this neighborhood. That undermines their uniformity argument and supports a downward revision.

Inconsistent sale ratios across comps (one at 0.85, one at 1.15) also undermine the district’s case — their valuation isn’t uniform.

The Stale-Comps Problem

Districts build their comp grids from preliminary spring values. As other owners’ protests proceed through the season, those comp properties get reductions — but the district may not update its evidence packet to reflect them.

Pull each equity comp’s current appraised value from the public ArcGIS portal the day before your hearing. If any comp’s current value is lower than what’s in the district’s grid, point that out: “This comp’s value was reduced from $X to $Y on [date]. The grid the district handed me is stale.”

What If You Didn’t Get the Packet?

If 14 days before the hearing you have nothing in the portal and nothing in the mail:

  • Send the district a written request citing §41.461 by section number. Email and certified mail both create a paper trail.
  • If they still don’t produce it, file a written objection at the start of the hearing. The panel will note the procedural failure on the record.
  • Under §41.67(d), evidence the district fails to deliver under §41.461 may be excluded from the hearing.

Generate Your Counter-Evidence

$50 for a packet built to read against the district's evidence side-by-side.

Montgomery, Harris, Dallas & Travis counties. $50 flat fee if you purchase a protest packet.