Great Agents are Always Free!
No Risk to You
In multifamily property tax appeals, great tax agents work for a percentage of the tax savings. This means that unless they are successful in reducing your property valuation, you won’t pay them anything. This takes the risk off you as the owner and places the burden on the tax agent to perform. As long as a tax agent is working on contingency, you will always come out ahead.
Great tax agents take a personal interest in you and your property. They visit it every year and build relationships with those at the property and the Central Appraisal District. The results you experience are much better and lasting than those of a volume agent.
The Cost of a Bad Agent
A bad agent can cost you more than just the current year tax savings, they can cost you your reputation, which could impact future deals and tax savings. Just because an agent is working on a contingency fee does not mean they are getting you the best results. They may even be getting you small reductions every year, but if they are only taking those small reductions because they are too busy to know your property, you may be losing out on thousands in tax savings.
A bad agent may save you $10,000 a year on a single property, but a great agent may save you $20,000. If the great agent’s fee is 30% instead of the lower 20%, you will still net $14,000 rather than $8,000 each year by choosing the better, higher fee agent. If they were to average those same results over the next 10 years, you would net $140,000 in tax savings vs. only $80,000. All of that savings is on one property. Imagine if you had 10, 50, or 100 properties; the difference in those results add up quickly.
Don’t Shortchange Yourself
Unfortunately, too many multifamily owners unknowingly undervalue themselves and undercut their success. They think they want the cheapest agent believing it will save them money on fees. The cheap agents are sly and promise them all sorts of things to get the deal, but the client quickly finds out that it was a smoke show to get them to buy. The deliverables are less shiny than advertised, the results are subpar, and appeals are being churned out of a volume machine, with little human interaction or judgment.
Quality representation takes time and personal attention. Multifamily owners with the mindset of long-term success choose agents that specialize in their property type. They choose to pay a higher contingency fee to ensure their properties are visited annually and treated individually. There is a lot of money on the line in property taxes. It is, after all, usually the number one expense for the Texas multifamily property. Successful owners choose quality over quantity. They don’t want to be a number, unable to speak to a live person when they have questions. The value is in the relationship with their agent, and knowing their agent truly cares about their properties gives them peace of mind. And peace of mind is something we could all use more of in the world today.
