I live in Austin TX and got one of the mailers last year. I was wondering how you pulled it off.
The handwriting on the outside does make it look personal but, once you open it, it is obviously computer generated due to the consistency of the writing. If anything, I'd say the writing in inside undermined the message because nobody is going to handwrite a letter to solicit that business. You should test only doing the signature only and see if impacts your response rate.
We also got a couple of 'we want to buy your home' mailings. It does feel like it impacts our open rate but I can't tell if it is just due to novelty.
I think the main reason it 'works' as a business proposition is that the City is doing blanket increases and relying on protests to catch their mistakes. They do this (in part) because they are forbidden from using actual MLS data. It costs me 3-4 hours to do a protest so outsourcing it makes sense if your time is valuable. But when it came down to it, I wasn't willing to let them represent me -- something about it felt off -- and I wound up just accepting the increase.
The system doesn't feel broken -- just wasteful. How else are you going to do a property tax? I do wonder if this goes the way of medical billing (overcharge at first because you know you are going to lose some to protests) or it creates a watchdog effect that make the City limit the increases to an amount that is not likely to draw protests.
No way, you got one of our letters? That's crazy! I'd be curious which version you got. We sent a few different iterations. I'll have to look you up tomorrow when I'm back at the computer.
Re: the system. I can't disagree there. It's a disaster and there has to be a better way. Counties rely on a certain percentage of people protesting and the ones that don't get kinda screwed imo. The unfortunate truth is that everyone should protest every year. That's a broken system. Some other states only revalue every third year, so the counties have a better shot at fairly valuing everything because they have 1/3rd the workload. Not Texas though. They revalue everything every year, so it all just gets ballparked.
I assume it was yours. Everything fits your description and I don't think anyone else is doing exactly the same thing.
I don't think the system is broken. It's just not an easy problem, especially if you can't use the market to set the price. California's only-when-you-sell system seems a lot worse.
Now, you could have a fairer system, but this is America and we're not particularly concerned about fairness when you get down to it. Austin's system actually has some progressive features that it is quiet about so the State does make them stop doing it. For example, if you are over 65, you can defer your property taxes until you die and accrue simple (not compound) interest. And houses have a quality 'grade'. Lower grade housing stock gets smaller annual increases which makes the system mildly progressive.
There is no state income tax so a lot of stuff gets funded through property taxes. It's not like the money is used to build bombs to blow up people on the other side of the world. Taxes are the price of a civil society and gaming the system was one of the primary causes of the decline of the Rome Empire.
So I don't agree "paying the minimum taxes you can get away with" is the same thing as "being screwed". It literally is not worth my time to protest most years, or even to hire a 3rd party, and I'm okay with that. I see companies like yours serving to keep the system relatively honest. The only thing I would change is that I'd add a $20 filing fee which is refunded if they make an adjustment to cut down on the junk protests, which are paid for my property tax dollars.
I looked you up. If the word "Graveline" means anything to you, then I found the right guy!
It's possible that you got one of our handwritten letters, given the properties that you own. I think it's unlikely given the value of Bois though. But it's been a long time since we've sent the handwritten stuff now, so who knows! Small world either way.
Let me know if you want us to handle it next year ;)
The handwriting on the outside does make it look personal but, once you open it, it is obviously computer generated due to the consistency of the writing. If anything, I'd say the writing in inside undermined the message because nobody is going to handwrite a letter to solicit that business. You should test only doing the signature only and see if impacts your response rate.
We also got a couple of 'we want to buy your home' mailings. It does feel like it impacts our open rate but I can't tell if it is just due to novelty.
I think the main reason it 'works' as a business proposition is that the City is doing blanket increases and relying on protests to catch their mistakes. They do this (in part) because they are forbidden from using actual MLS data. It costs me 3-4 hours to do a protest so outsourcing it makes sense if your time is valuable. But when it came down to it, I wasn't willing to let them represent me -- something about it felt off -- and I wound up just accepting the increase.
The system doesn't feel broken -- just wasteful. How else are you going to do a property tax? I do wonder if this goes the way of medical billing (overcharge at first because you know you are going to lose some to protests) or it creates a watchdog effect that make the City limit the increases to an amount that is not likely to draw protests.