Property tax company Ownwell refuses to defend itself from charges by competitors

I want to warn you about a property tax company that is blanketing North Texas homeowners with deceptive marketing.

Ownwell, based in Austin, does something that no other property tax company I know of does. Ownwell tells its prospects and customers that it will file for free your homestead designation paperwork. Then the company says in its service agreement that it will collect 25% of whatever is saved from homestead exemptions.

This could be a sizeable savings when you consider that the new state property tax law increased the homestead exemption on your primary residence from $40,000 to $100,000.

You don’t need anyone to file for your homestead exemption. In many counties, it can be automatically attached to your primary residence. There’s also an exemption for people over 65 years old and those with disabilities. You can file your paperwork on that for free.

Kaufman County’s Appraisal District is warning residents on its website of a “SCAM ALERT! FILING OF A HOMESTEAD EXEMPTION IS FREE. DO NOT BE TAKEN IN BY SOLICITORS REQUIRING A FEE TO FILE PAPERWORK FOR YOU. CALL THE APPRAISAL DISTRICT FOR MORE INFORMATION. WE ARE HERE TO HELP!”

If you don’t know if you have the exemption, check your property tax notice, which may have arrived in the mail in recent days. Or go to your appraisal district’s website and look up your property. You could call, but I hear wait times in some appraisal districts can be up to an hour.

Do you have your exemptions?

I despise the title of homestead exemption because it can be difficult to understand. But you get to take $100,000 off of your appraised value and you pay taxes on what’s left.

It’s really more of a discount.

After covering the confusion and chaos of the Texas property system for more than a decade, I’ve learned that, sadly, it’s low-income homeowners who are most likely not going to realize they don’t have a homestead exemption. That means they’re not getting the benefit of the discount. This is terribly unfair.

False promises?

But back to Ownwell. This company has done several other things that not only tick off competing companies who have complained to The Watchdog, but they also anger me.

Aside from filing for your exemptions if you don’t have them and taking 25%, the company in its mailings is promising big savings compared to other companies.

I don’t know how they can promise specific numbers for savings when they haven’t held protest hearings on properties yet. How would they know how much they can save? But in their mailings, they promise exact dollar numbers in savings.

Ownwell also claims to have an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau. I don’t put a lot of stock in a BBB rating because it’s a pay-to-play setup. But when a company claims to have an A+ and it’s been revoked, that’s worth a look.

The BBB revoked the A+ rating in February because of “the failure by the business to adhere” to BBB standards.

Yet on some marketing materials, the company is still bragging about its perfect score.

Here’s one more red flag about Ownwell. Company executives ignored The Watchdog’s multiple requests for an interview to go over these findings. I made several calls to their public phone number and sent a backup online message. No response from two executives listed in the BBB report — CEO Colton Pace and Carolyn Riley, whose title is “head of customer experience.”

If a property tax company during property tax season won’t talk about its work, how can you trust them?

‘What’s the catch?’

What Ownwell is doing is not illegal. It’s just not good business practice. Other property tax companies may be forced to alter their rules to compete and that would be bad for taxpayers.

In its mailings, Ownwell asks: “What’s the catch? No catch! Ownwell takes care of everything for you and you only pay 25% of what you save. This is what we do best.” (The promise ends with a smiley face.)

25% fee when it’s free

Back to the exemption shenanigans because that’s most troubling.

Glenn Goodrich, owner of PropertyTax.io, which helps taxpayers understand their chances in an appraisal protest, tells me: “In my industry, I think it is acceptable to charge for an exemption only if the appraisal district denies it and you must file a protest that you were wrongfully denied an exemption. In a vast majority of cases, exemptions are accepted without the need to file a protest. That is the only time I think it’s appropriate to charge for the service.”

One more thing: Ownwell misstates the actual pricing of its competitors, he says.

Will Wiggins, co-owner of North Texas Property Tax Services, says in the first two years since Ownwell entered North Texas, “I have never seen an Ownwell agent in hearing rooms. Never.”

He adds, “The fact that they charge for homestead exemptions is enough to tell anyone to stay away.”

If an Ownwell executive would speak publicly and defend the company, he or she would likely point to specific language in its service agreement.

“There is no fee associated with filing an exemption. Exemption filing is provided free of charge. If an exemption is successfully obtained, Ownwell’s fee for the exemption service is 25%.”

What can you do? Make sure that you have a homestead exemption on your primary residence. And if you’re over 65 or disabled make sure those exemptions are tied to your property.

Oh, and don’t fall for this. The last thing we need at the start of the chaotic and unfair 2024 appraisal/property tax protest season is this kind of game-playing.

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