Property Tax Fiasco

Dallas County tax assessor’s property taxes go down due to house fire

Dallas County Tax Assessor John Ames' home

Dallas County Tax Assessor John Ames saw his property taxes decrease in 2016.

Photo via Google Maps

UPDATE: Dallas County Tax Assessor John Ames had a low appraisal because his home burned down. The story and headline have been changed to reflect that information.

---------

Dallas County Tax Assessor John R. Ames, who lives at 1408 Armstrong Dr. in a 5,199-square-foot, mid-1980s house on a cul de sac, is one of the few people in Dallas whose property taxes apparently went down this year. Last year his house was appraised at $254,380. This year it's appraised at $177,270.

I spoke to John today, and he told me the reason why his home was appraised so low is that they had a house fire in February 2015. They lost everything. They’ve been re-building, and the home was only 40 percent complete on January 1.

Dallas-area homeowners are seeing an across-the-board increase in property values, estimated to be as high as 15 percent.

The value of Ames' land held steady from 2015 to 2016, but the improvement to his property dropped from $218,380 in 2015 to $141,270 in 2016. His home is the only one on his street to have seen such a drop; his neighbors all saw increases.

John was out of town on County business when the fire started in — horrifically — his son’s bedroom in a canned light! Fortunately the family escaped with no injury, but they lost almost everything.

---

A version of this story originally was posted on Candy's Dirt.

reports zillow home-for-sale

No Cap

Dallas was a top-10 destination for Gen Zers on the move for 2023

Photo by Lance Asper on Unsplash

Who wouldn't want to live in a Gen Z paradise like Dallas?

As Gen Z enters adulthood, many are flocking to the nation's biggest cultural hubs like New York City, Los Angeles — and now Dallas, which had the ninth-highest inflow of Gen Zers in 2023.

Dallas' new reputation as a Gen Z hotspot was unveiled in a recent report by American home improvement brand This Old House, which analyzed migration trends across multiple generations using 2023 U.S. Census Bureau data.

Dallas saw an influx of 13,770 Gen Z residents last year to become the generation's No. 9 most popular city. That's 4,223 more Gen Zers than the net migration rate from 2022, the report found.

Real estate marketplace Zillow seems to agree on a statewide scale, declaring Texas as the No. 1 destination for Gen Zers on the move in 2024.

However, as Gen Z Dallasites may have learned, it's going to take a big bite out of their paychecks to live in such a highly sought after city. A March RentCafe housing cost analysis predicted Gen Z adults living in Dallas are likely to spend over $149,000 on rent by the time they are 30 years old.

While Dallas saw big gains in its Gen Z population last year, many other big cities saw a mass exodus. Plano, for example — which gained 1,295 Gen Z residents in 2022 — lost 4,028 Gen Zers in 2023, the report discovered.

The biggest Gen-Z exodus was in El Paso, with a drop of 5,607 — "a sharp turn from 2022 when the city saw an increase," the report said. "Other cities, including Plano, Texas; Memphis, Tennessee; McKinney, Texas; and Wichita, Kansas, are seeing similar declines."

"Gen X, baby boomers, and the Silent Generation are also moving away from major cities, particularly New York City and Washington, D.C.," the report said. "They’re heading to some of the same cities as Gen Z, including Houston and Jacksonville, Florida."

The top 10 cities that gained the most Gen Z residents in 2023 are:

No. 1 – New York City, New York
No. 2 – Los Angeles, California
No. 3 – Houston, Texas
No. 4 – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
No. 5 – Chicago, Illinois
No. 6 – San Diego, California
No. 7 – Seattle, Washington
No. 8 – Charlotte, North Carolina
No. 9 – Dallas, Texas
No. 10 – Minneapolis, Minnesota

trends