What Your Texas Property Taxes Become After Buying

In Texas, buying a home usually raises the property tax bill you actually pay compared with the seller's. Appraisal districts value a home at 100% of market value, and the protections that held the seller's bill down belong to the seller. The bill after you buy is the tax rate times about the price you paid.

General information about how Texas residential property tax works, not tax or legal advice. Confirm a specific parcel's figures with its appraisal district.

How the bill is built

• The county appraisal district values each property as of January 1 at market value (Tax Code 23.01). There is no assessment ratio: a home appraised at $400,000 is taxed on up to $400,000.
• The bill is the taxable value times each taxing unit's rate, added up: county, city, school district, and often a college, a hospital district, flood control or emergency services. Rates are quoted per $100 of taxable value.
• Many Texas homes are also in a municipal utility district (MUD), which levies its own rate and can add roughly $0.50 to $1.00 per $100. It is easy to miss because it is not in the county, city or school rate.

Why the seller's bill is a poor guide

• The homestead cap. A homeowner who lives in the home has its appraised value held to a rise of at most 10% a year (Tax Code 23.23). The cap belongs to the owner and ends when that owner stops qualifying, so the buyer's first year is at market value, however far the seller's capped value had fallen behind.
• The non-homestead cap. An investment property has a 20% yearly limit on increases while its value is under about $5 million (the "circuit breaker", Tax Code 23.231). It also belongs to the owner and ends at sale. The statute is set to expire at the end of 2026 unless the Legislature extends it, so check its status before relying on it.
• Over-65 and disabled owners. They get a further school exemption and a ceiling on their school tax. The ceiling does not transfer to a buyer.

Texas is a non-disclosure state: sale prices are not filed publicly, so the listing price and the seller's tax bill are often the only numbers visible. A listing that shows the seller's bill is showing a capped, exempted figure, not what you will be billed.

The school homestead exemption

A homestead takes $140,000 off the school district's taxable value (raised from $100,000 for tax year 2025). It reduces only the school part of the bill. Cities and counties may grant their own, usually a percentage, and these differ from place to place. A buyer generally qualifies from the first January 1 they own and live in the home, so the bill right after closing often has no exemption. File with the appraisal district once you qualify.

An estimate you can do yourself

Using the Texas Comptroller's 2025 adopted rates for Houston, per $100: county 0.3810, city 0.5192, Houston ISD 0.8783, together 1.7784.

1. Take the price: $400,000.
2. Without an exemption: $400,000 × 1.7784 / 100 = $7,114 a year.
3. With a homestead: the school part is on $260,000 ($400,000 less $140,000), so county $1,524 + city $2,077 + school $2,284 = $5,884 a year.

Dallas works out the same way with county 0.2155, city 0.6988 and Dallas ISD 0.9938. Rates differ a lot by school district, and a city can lie in several, so use the rate for the address's district. The Texas tax-after-buying calculator applies these steps for 35 cities, and the city pages (Houston, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio and others on the Texas city index) show each city's rates and school district standing.

What the estimate leaves out

• College, hospital, flood-control and emergency-services districts, and any MUD or public improvement district (PID) the home is in. A PID usually bills a separate yearly assessment that is in no rate.
• A city's or county's own homestead percentage.
• Rates adopted for the current year, which can differ from the latest published ones.

The analyzer builds the bill for a specific address from its own taxing units where the appraisal district publishes them (Collin, Tarrant, Travis, Harris, Dallas, Bexar, Williamson and Fort Bend counties), and says plainly where it cannot.

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Sources: Texas Tax Code 23.01, 23.23, 23.231 and 11.13; the Texas Comptroller's report of 2025 adopted tax rates; exemption and cap figures last reviewed 2026-11-03 (the cap and exemptions can change in the 2027 legislative session).