This Texas appraisal district asked to inspect a home. Chief appraiser calls it a mistake
Enjoying their morning coffee with their shaggy terrier, George, David Coulter and Shelley Cushman have stacks of papers on their dining room table and a tote bag with even more on the floor.
The papers are correspondence they’ve had with the Denton Central Appraisal District for over a decade, mostly made up of photos and forms to protest the value of their home in the Idiot’s Hill neighborhood of Denton.
But the most recent correspondence with the county agency is the most head-scratching.
The retired couple received a letter dated Jan. 16 from the appraisal district asking for a site inspection, then another one following up just six days later.
They aren’t sure what triggered it. Coulter thinks it could be the gazebo the couple added last year, maybe the solar panels, or the years of protests. But he is sure of one thing.
“I certainly don’t want them coming into my house,” he said.
Ironically enough, neither does Denton’s chief appraiser Don Spencer, who said the letters shouldn’t have made it to the couple’s mailbox in the first place.
“We don’t go into people’s houses just out of sheer security and liability,” Spencer said. “We don’t send any notices about that for certain. To be quite honest with you, we don’t. We don’t have a procedure of going inside of any homes that’s not a part of our procedures.”
Spencer said the notices were a mistake and he will look into the matter.
However Spencer said it isn’t unheard of for an appraiser to come by a house, but only when they’ve been invited by the homeowner.
The request from the county appraisal district also confuses former Mark Burroughs, a former mayor of Denton and partner at Sawko & Burroughs law firm. He said he has never heard of an appraisal district asking to see someone’s property.
Burroughs, whose firm practices real estate law, said it is common for the appraisal district to visit commercial properties, but he knows of only one instance when appraisers visited a home.
But he said the request likely isn’t unlawful.
“I don’t know of anything in the property tax code that would prevent that,” he said. “I don’t think that it’s something that would be prohibited.”
The inspection request is just the latest grievance the couple has with the appraisal district, which assesses the value of property for tax purposes.
Cracks can be seen throughout the 66-year-old home, from the midcentury floor tiles to the hardwood floors, and splitting between the floral colored wallpaper and even up to the ceiling and around the windows.
Year after year Cushman has to bring photo evidence of this to the appraiser’s office for an accurate evaluation of the home. She doesn’t enjoy the process.
“It makes me feel like I’m a crook and I’m not. I’m not defrauding them. I just want it to be fair,” Cushman said. “I don’t like feeling like they feel like I’m trying to get away with something.”
Regardless of its quirks and the taxes they may pay on their home, the couple is happy to be living there, Cushman said, walking around yard, which features a greenhouse, the new gazebo, a pair of patios and a swimming pool.
While the appraisal district likely won’t get to inspect the property, Spencer, the chief appraiser, hopes for a conversation with the couple over the letters he maintained were sent by accident.
“I would welcome the opportunity to have some conversation with them and get to the bottom of this and get it resolved, “ Spencer said.
