Travis County Property Tax Protest for Landlords (2026–2027): Deadlines, Evidence, and What a Win Is Worth

If you own a rental in Travis County, you can protest its appraised value with the Travis Central Appraisal District (TCAD) every year, and the deadline is May 15 or 30 days after your appraisal notice is delivered, whichever is later. The protest goes to TCAD's Appraisal Review Board, and the district, not you, has to prove its value. For an Austin landlord, that one spring filing is the biggest lever you have on the largest bill the house generates after the mortgage.

This guide is the Travis County playbook for rental owners: the deadline and its exceptions, whether your house is really in Travis County, what the 2026 Austin tax rate means for a rental, how to file through the TCAD portal, the evidence that works, the informal meeting and the hearing, what to do if you lose or miss the deadline, and how to work out what a win is worth. Every rule is cited to the statute or the agency that publishes it.

Updated November 2026. This page used to be a general guide to Austin property taxes. It has been rewritten as a protest guide for the 2027 season, with the tax rates updated to the 2026 adopted rates and the circuit breaker threshold corrected to the Comptroller's 2026 figure. It is general information, not legal or tax advice.

The short answer

File by May 15, protest on both market value and unequal appraisal, and make TCAD prove its number. Those three moves cover most of what an Austin rental owner needs to do. The table below is the whole process on one screen.

Question	Answer for a Travis County rental	Source
Deadline	May 15 or 30 days after notice delivery, whichever is later	Tax Code Sec. 41.44(a)
Weekend or holiday deadline	Next regular business day is timely	Tax Code Sec. 1.06
Where to file	TCAD portal, mail (PO Box 149012, Austin TX 78714) or in person (850 East Anderson Lane)	traviscad.org
Main grounds	Appraised value; unequal appraisal	Tax Code Sec. 41.41(a)
Who must prove the value	The appraisal district, by a preponderance of the evidence	Tax Code Sec. 41.43(a)
Hearing notice	Mailed at least 15 days before the formal hearing	TCAD protest page
Appeal after the ARB	District court petition within 60 days of notice of the final order	Tax Code Sec. 42.21(a)
Alternative to court	Binding arbitration if the value set by the order is $5 million or less	Tax Code Sec. 41A.01

When is the Travis County protest deadline?

The deadline is May 15 or the 30th day after your appraisal notice was delivered, whichever is later. Texas Tax Code Section 41.44(a) sets that rule for every appraisal district in Texas, so TCAD, Williamson County and Hays County all run on the same clock. TCAD's own protest page words it as 30 days after your notice is mailed; the statute says delivered. If your notice arrived late, do the math from the delivery date and file well before either reading of the deadline.

When the last day lands on a weekend or holiday, Tax Code Section 1.06 makes the filing timely on the next regular business day. Do not plan around that. File in early May, or as soon as the notice arrives.

Notices go out in spring. For the 2026 tax year TCAD announced it was mailing appraisal notices to more than 427,000 Travis County property owners, and said single-family homes saw an average 1.8% decline in market value while the overall appraisal roll rose 5.48% to $482 billion, driven mainly by healthcare, industrial and office commercial property. An average is not your house. A falling average is a reason to open your notice, not a reason to skip it.

Is your rental actually in Travis County?

An Austin mailing address does not tell you which appraisal district values your house. The Austin metro spreads across Travis, Williamson and Hays counties, and several suburbs straddle county lines. File with the wrong district and you have not filed at all. Look up the parcel on the district's own property search before you build a case.

County	Appraisal district	Austin-area places to double-check
Travis	Travis Central Appraisal District (TCAD)	Most of Austin, much of Pflugerville, Lakeway, Bee Cave, Manor, parts of Cedar Park and Leander
Williamson	Williamson County's appraisal district	Round Rock, Georgetown, Hutto, most of Cedar Park and Leander, far north Austin
Hays	Hays County's appraisal district	Kyle, Buda, San Marcos, Dripping Springs, a sliver of south Austin

The deadline, the grounds and the burden of proof below are the same in every county because they come from the Tax Code. The portal, the hearing schedule and the evidence rules are each district's own, so the TCAD-specific steps in this guide apply to Travis County parcels only.

What the 2026 Austin tax rate means for a rental

For a rental inside the City of Austin and Austin ISD, the five main taxing units adopted a combined rate of about $2.12 per $100 of value for 2026. That is roughly $9,545 a year, or about $795 a month, on a house appraised at $450,000. Here is the stack, as reported by Community Impact on October 9, 2026:

Taxing unit	Prior-year rate (per $100)	2026 adopted rate (per $100)	Adopted
Austin ISD	$0.9252	$0.9184	Sept. 24, 2026
City of Austin	$0.524017	$0.579948	Aug. 12, 2026
Travis County	$0.375845	$0.386210	Sept. 15, 2026
Central Health	$0.118023	$0.132863	Sept. 15, 2026
Austin Community College	not reported	$0.103643	Sept. 14, 2026
Combined	—	about $2.12	Our arithmetic

The city rate rose about 11%, the largest move in the stack, and Community Impact reports it is above the city's no-new-revenue rate and the most the city can adopt without an election. Austin ISD went down. The net is a combined rate a few cents higher than last year. Suburban rentals carry a different stack, often with a municipal utility district on top, so read the taxing units on your own notice rather than borrowing these.

The rate is set by elected bodies and you cannot protest it. The value is set by the appraisal district and you can. That is why the protest is where a landlord's effort belongs.

Why a converted home gets a bigger bill

A rental is not a residence homestead, so it gets no homestead exemption and no homestead appraisal cap. The Texas Comptroller describes the homestead cap as limiting the increase in a qualifying homestead's appraised value to 10% a year. A rental does not qualify for it.

This lands hardest on the accidental landlord, the owner who tried to sell, did not get the price, and rented the house instead. Zillow Research found that in Austin, 4.1% of rental listings had previously been listed for sale (data through October 2025), against 2.3% nationally. If that is you, the year the homestead exemption falls away can bring a much larger bill with no change in the rate at all. Texas has specific rules for temporary absences from a homestead, which our guide on how to become a landlord in Texas walks through; confirm your own situation with the appraisal district. Our accidental landlord guide covers the rest of the first-year decisions.

What can you protest, and who has to prove it?

Texas Tax Code Section 41.41(a) lists the actions an owner can protest, and for a rental the two that matter are the appraised value and unequal appraisal. Check both on the protest form. Raising both costs nothing, and they are decided on different tests.

Ground in Sec. 41.41(a)	What it means for a rental owner
Determination of appraised value	TCAD's number is higher than what the house would sell for on January 1
Unequal appraisal	Your house is appraised at a higher ratio than comparable properties
Circuit breaker limitation denial	The district decided your property does not qualify for the 2026 limitation
Taxing units	The wrong taxing units are listed for the parcel
Ownership or inclusion on the roll	You are listed as owner of property you do not own, or the property is described wrongly

Unequal appraisal is a protest that your property is appraised at a higher ratio to its value than comparable properties, measured against the median. In Austin subdivisions where near-identical houses carry different appraisals, it is often the stronger argument, because the comparison set comes from TCAD's own records.

The burden of proof is on TCAD. Section 41.43(a) says the appraisal district must establish the value by a preponderance of the evidence presented at the hearing, and if it fails, the protest is decided for the owner. Two rules help you further:

• Certified appraisal, property worth $1 million or less. Under Section 41.43(a-1), if you file a qualifying certified appraisal that supports your value, the district must prove its value by clear and convincing evidence, a higher bar. Read the subsection for the filing timing before you commission one.
• Unequal appraisal. Section 41.43(b) says an unequal-appraisal protest is decided for the owner unless the district makes the showing the statute requires about the property's appraisal ratio against the median level of appraisal.

How to file with TCAD

Most Travis County owners file online through the TCAD portal at traviscad.org/portal. You need the property owner ID and PIN printed on your appraisal notice. TCAD says the portal gives you immediate confirmation and lets you upload evidence, review TCAD's evidence, and accept or decline a settlement offer, all in one place.

If you prefer paper, mail the protest form to Travis Central Appraisal District, PO Box 149012, Austin TX 78714, or drop it off at 850 East Anderson Lane, Austin, TX 78752, during business hours. TCAD publishes step-by-step portal instructions for filing, submitting evidence and reviewing its evidence on its forms page. Keep proof of the date you filed.

A filing checklist for an Austin rental owner:

1. Confirm on TCAD's property search that the parcel is in Travis County, and note the owner ID and PIN from the notice.
2. Note the delivery date of the notice and calculate your real deadline under Section 41.44(a).
3. File the protest and check both the market-value and unequal-appraisal grounds.
4. Upload your evidence through the portal, then review TCAD's evidence as soon as it appears.
5. Decide on any settlement offer against your own evidence, not against the notice.
6. If you go to hearing, calendar the date and prepare five printed sets of evidence, which TCAD asks owners to bring.

You can also appoint someone to represent you, commonly a property tax consultant, using TCAD's Appointment of Agent form. Read any consultant agreement and its fee basis before you sign.

Evidence that works for an Austin rental

The best evidence is whatever shows what your house was worth on January 1, in the condition it was actually in. A rental owner usually has better records than an owner-occupant, and that is an advantage at the table.

Evidence	Supports	Notes
Closed sales of comparable houses near January 1	Market value	Same subdivision or school zone where possible; adjust for size, age and condition
Appraised values of similar nearby houses from TCAD's property search	Unequal appraisal	Build the comparison from the district's own records
Dated photos and repair estimates	Market value	Foundation movement on clay soil, roof age, deferred maintenance the district did not account for
Your own failed listing, if the house did not sell	Market value	List price, price cuts, days on market and offers received are direct evidence of what the market would pay
Rent history, vacancy and operating costs	Market value (income view)	Shows what the house actually earns, not what a model assumes
TCAD's own evidence, reviewed in the portal	Both	Look for wrong square footage, wrong condition, or comparables that are not comparable

The failed-listing row is the accidental landlord's quiet advantage. If you listed the house last year, cut the price twice and still could not sell, that history is about as close to a market test as evidence gets. Automated online estimates, on the other hand, are weak on their own. A panel wants closed sales, documented condition and arithmetic it can follow. Rent data helps too; our average rent in Austin report shows how flat rents have been against rising costs.

The informal meeting and the ARB hearing

Most TCAD protests move through two stages: an informal meeting with a TCAD appraiser, and, if you do not settle, a formal hearing before the Appraisal Review Board. The Appraisal Review Board is an independent panel that hears evidence from the owner and the district and issues an order setting the value.

Informal meeting. TCAD says that once your protest and evidence are processed, you become eligible for an informal meeting with a TCAD appraiser, and that a settlement offer may come out of it. Accepting a settlement usually ends the protest for that year, so read what you accept.

Formal hearing. If you do not settle, the ARB sets the schedule. TCAD says you will receive a hearing notice by mail at least 15 days before the formal hearing, that in-person hearings are held at 850 East Anderson Lane unless your letter says otherwise, and that you should bring the hearing letter and five sets of your evidence. Keep the presentation short: your value, your three best comparables, the condition evidence, and why the district's comparables do not fit.

Do not miss it. TCAD says a missed hearing is dismissed unless you appeared by valid affidavit, by agent or by a pre-scheduled telephone hearing, and that you can ask the ARB chairperson by letter within 4 days of the scheduled hearing to reopen it for good cause. TCAD also offers an online rescheduling page if you need to move the date in advance.

If you lose at the ARB

You have two paths: a district court appeal or, for most single-family rentals, binding arbitration.

• District court. Section 42.21(a) requires a petition for review to be filed with the district court within 60 days after you receive notice that a final order has been entered. Failure to file on time bars the appeal.
• Binding arbitration. Section 41A.01 lets an owner choose binding arbitration instead of court for an order deciding a value or unequal-appraisal protest, if the property is the owner's residence homestead or the value set by the order is $5 million or less. Arbitration has its own filing steps, so read the Texas Comptroller's current instructions before choosing it.

For one rental, the gap left after an ARB hearing is often too small to justify court. Run the numbers in the section below before you escalate.

What if I missed the May 15 deadline?

You may still have options, but each one is narrow.

Path	When it applies	Deadline
Late protest for good cause, Sec. 41.44(b)	You show good cause, as determined by the board, for missing the deadline	Before the ARB approves the appraisal records
Substantial-error correction, Sec. 25.25(d)	The appraised value of non-homestead property exceeds the correct value by more than one-third	Before the taxes become delinquent

The one-third test matters for landlords. For a residence homestead, Section 25.25(d) uses one-fourth. A rental is not a homestead, so the error must exceed one-third of the correct value, which is a high bar. The practical fix is simple: put "open the appraisal notice" on your April calendar every year.

The 20% cap ends after 2026

The circuit breaker limitation is a temporary Texas cap of 20% a year on how fast the appraised value of qualifying non-homestead real property can rise. The Texas Comptroller says it applies to non-homestead real property valued at $5,320,000 or less for the 2026 tax year, a figure adjusted each year from the $5 million set for 2024, and that it expires December 31, 2026. (An earlier version of this page gave the threshold as $5.16 million; the Comptroller's 2026 figure is $5,320,000.)

For an Austin landlord that has two consequences. First, a denial of the limitation is itself a protestable action under Section 41.41(a), so check your 2026 notice if the cap was not applied. Second, 2027 is the first year in which, unless the Legislature acts, nothing slows an appraisal increase on your rental except the market and your protest. That makes the spring 2027 protest season more important than any recent one, which is why this guide is published in November rather than April.

What is a protest win worth?

Multiply the value reduction you can realistically support by your combined tax rate. That is your annual saving. At the 2026 City of Austin and Austin ISD stack of about $2.12 per $100:

Value reduction	Annual saving at about $2.12 per $100	Monthly equivalent
$10,000	about $212	about $18
$25,000	about $530	about $44
$50,000	about $1,061	about $88

Use the rate on your own statement; a Williamson or Hays County rental will be different. If you hire a consultant, subtract the fee. If the house is worth $1 million or less and the gap is large, weigh the cost of a certified appraisal against the saving. And remember the value you win becomes the starting point for next year's conversation with TCAD, which is one reason owners protest every year rather than only when the notice is shocking.

Taxes stay deductible on the other side of the ledger: property taxes on a rental are generally a rental expense on Schedule E rather than a personal itemized deduction. Our landlord tax deduction guide goes line by line. We manage properties; we do not give tax advice, so confirm your situation with a CPA.

Where a flat-fee manager fits

Flat Fee Landlord does not file property tax protests. Filing is the owner's job, or the job of an agent the owner appoints. We are your property manager, not your tax agent.

What we do produce is the record a good protest leans on. You get an itemized owner statement every month and 24/7 online access to your statements, documents and maintenance requests, so the rent history, vacancy and repair invoices for the year are in one place when May comes around. If you are the owner whose Austin house did not sell, week one with us looks like this: we price the home from live comparables, get it rent-ready and listed, and start screening applicants. With Tenant Placement + Management, if no completed application is generated within 21 days of the home being rent-ready and listed, we waive the first two months of management fees. That is an application milestone, not a guaranteed lease-signing or move-in date, and owner restrictions, pricing outside our recommended range, access or readiness delays, and events beyond our control are excluded.

We charge a flat monthly fee, starting at $139/mo on annual billing, not a percentage of rent. When the tax bill pushes you to raise rent at renewal (Texas has no statewide rent cap; see our Texas rent increase laws guide), the increase goes to you. Your management cost should not rise just because your rent did.

If you want to see what your Austin rental should be earning against this year's tax bill, request a free rental analysis. For exact pricing on your property, use our quote builder.

Related reading: our statewide Texas property tax protest guide covers the rules outside Travis County, our Harris County protest guide walks the same statute through HCAD, what property management costs in Austin covers the other side of your expense line, and should I rent or sell my Austin home runs the full hold-or-sell math. For the local picture, see our Austin property management page.

Frequently asked questions

When is the property tax protest deadline in Travis County?

May 15 or the 30th day after your appraisal notice is delivered, whichever is later, under Tax Code Section 41.44(a). If the last day is a weekend or legal holiday, Section 1.06 makes the next regular business day timely.

How do I file a property tax protest with TCAD?

Online at traviscad.org/portal with the owner ID and PIN from your notice, by mail to PO Box 149012, Austin TX 78714, or in person at 850 East Anderson Lane.

Can a landlord protest the appraisal on a rental property in Austin?

Yes. A rental has the same protest rights as any property, and under Section 41.43(a) TCAD must prove its value by a preponderance of the evidence.

What is the 2026 property tax rate in Austin?

About $2.12 per $100 for a property in the City of Austin and Austin ISD, adding the five main 2026 adopted rates. Your notice lists your exact taxing units.

Can I still protest after May 15 in Travis County?

Sometimes, under Section 41.44(b) for good cause before the ARB approves the records, or under Section 25.25(d) for a non-homestead overappraisal of more than one-third before taxes become delinquent.

What happens if I lose at the Travis County appraisal review board?

You can petition the district court within 60 days after receiving notice of the final order under Section 42.21(a), or, if the value set by the order is $5 million or less, choose binding arbitration under Section 41A.01.

Does the circuit breaker limitation still apply to Austin rentals?

Through 2026 only. The Comptroller says it covers non-homestead real property valued at $5,320,000 or less for 2026 and expires December 31, 2026.

Does Flat Fee Landlord file my Travis County protest?

No. Filing is the owner's job or the job of an agent the owner appoints. We provide the monthly itemized owner statements and online document access that make the evidence easy to assemble.

Sources and last reviewed

Last reviewed: November 5, 2026. Statutes were fetched from the texas.public.law mirror of the Texas Tax Code, which cites the official text.

• Texas Tax Code Sec. 41.44, deadline for filing protest: https://texas.public.law/statutes/tex._tax_code_section_41.44
• Texas Tax Code Sec. 41.43, burden of proof: https://texas.public.law/statutes/tex._tax_code_section_41.43
• Texas Tax Code Sec. 25.25, correction of appraisal roll: https://texas.public.law/statutes/tex._tax_code_section_25.25
• Texas Tax Code Sec. 42.21, petition for review: https://texas.public.law/statutes/tex._tax_code_section_42.21
• Texas Tax Code Sec. 41.41, right of protest: https://texas.public.law/statutes/tex._tax_code_section_41.41
• Texas Tax Code Sec. 41A.01, binding arbitration: https://texas.public.law/statutes/tex._tax_code_section_41A.01
• Texas Tax Code Sec. 1.06, computation of time: https://texas.public.law/statutes/tex._tax_code_section_1.06
• Texas Comptroller, Valuing Property (circuit breaker limitation and homestead cap): https://comptroller.texas.gov/taxes/property-tax/valuing-property.php
• Travis Central Appraisal District, Protests: https://traviscad.org/protests/
• Travis Central Appraisal District, 2026 market values release: https://traviscad.org/news/2026-market-values-on-their-way/
• Community Impact, Where Austin property taxes go this year (October 9, 2026, updated October 22, 2026): https://communityimpact.com/central-austin/government/where-austin-property-taxes-go-this-year/
• Zillow Research, share of rental listings previously listed for sale (data through October 2025), as cited in our accidental landlord guide

This guide is general information, not legal or tax advice. Appraisal district procedures and portals change every year. Confirm the current process with TCAD or your county's appraisal district before you file, and consult a Texas-licensed attorney or property tax professional for a specific dispute.