Protest deadline in Comal and Hays is May 15 or 30 days after your notice, whichever is later. If you got your notice in April and didn't file, you're done for 2026. If you're reading this before your next notice hits, save it.

Here's the number that should bother you. In 2024, 78% of Hays County ARB hearings resulted in a value reduction, and 80% of informal protests were successful (O'Connor, using Hays CAD data). Comal was 74% informal, 75% at ARB. And still, only about 35% of Hays parcels got protested. Two out of three homeowners just paid the bill.

The reason people don't protest is they think it's a fight. It isn't. Most of the time it's a 15-minute conversation with an appraiser at an informal hearing where you hand them three or four comps and they cut your value. That's it. That's the whole thing.

What you need to bring, in order of what actually moves the needle:

Sales comps. Not Zillow. Real closed sales from the last 12 months, ideally the six months before January 1 of the tax year, within a mile if you can, similar square footage, similar age, similar acreage. Pull them off the MLS or ask an agent for a CMA — most of us will do it free if you're a past client or a maybe-future one. The median sale price in Hays County for the three months ending May 2026 was $394,000 per Redfin, while the median listing price in June was $419,177 per FRED. That gap is your friend if you were valued off list-price optimism.

Condition photos. Cracked slab, dated kitchen, roof at end of life, foundation issues, the wet spot in the ceiling from the storm in February. The appraiser has never been to your house. They valued it off a desk. Show them what's actually there. Bring contractor bids if you have them — a $22,000 roof quote does more than a paragraph about how the roof is old.

Equity comps. This is the one people miss. You can protest on unequal appraisal, meaning your neighbors with the same house are valued lower. Pull the appraisal district's own records on 5-10 similar properties in your subdivision. If yours is the outlier high, that alone can win it.

The Hays wrinkle for 2026: preliminary values went up 9.69% countywide, driven almost entirely by commercial and multifamily, per the Wimberley View reporting on Hays CAD data. Single-family was basically flat. If your single-family notice came back up 8-10%, that's the 10% homestead cap doing its work on your taxable value even though market value didn't move. You can still protest the market value down, which sets you up better next year when the cap resets off a lower base.

The Comal wrinkle: if you're in a MUD in one of the newer Bulverde or 281-corridor developments, your total rate can be $0.20 to $0.50 per $100 higher than your neighbor two miles away. You can't protest a MUD rate. You can protest the value it's applied to. Do that.

File online through the appraisal district portal. Request the informal first. If they lowball the reduction, take it to ARB — the hearing is 15 minutes, three panel members, you present, they decide same day. Wear a collared shirt. Don't argue about your tax bill, argue about the value. They can only change one of those.

Average reduction across protested properties in 2025 was around $1,067 per client per O'Connor's numbers. On a house near the Hays median that's real money for filling out a form and showing up.

File it. Bring comps. Show up.

Data sourced from O'Connor (Hays CAD data), FRED / Realtor.com, Redfin, and Wimberley View reporting on Hays Central Appraisal District. Verify current numbers with a local agent before acting.