Texas has no state property tax — the state constitution prohibits one. Every dollar you pay is levied locally, by whatever combination of taxing units cover a specific address: a county, a city (if the address is inside one), a school district, and often a special district like a Municipal Utility District (see Section 3). Each county has its own independent Central Appraisal District (CAD) — Harris County's is HCAD, Fort Bend County's is FBCAD, and Montgomery, Brazoria, and Galveston counties each run their own — which determines a property's market value annually. Each taxing unit then separately sets its own tax rate, applied against that appraised value (minus any exemptions — see Section 2).
The tradeoff for having no state income tax is that Texas property tax bills tend to run high by national standards. Effective property-tax-rate rankings vary by methodology and source — different studies have placed Texas anywhere from roughly the 6th to 10th highest among U.S. states in recent years — so rather than quote one precise national rank as if it were settled, we'd describe Texas as consistently among the roughly ten highest-property-tax states nationally, which is well supported across multiple independent sources even though the exact number moves year to year.
Because there's no single statewide rate, homestead exemptions — which reduce the taxable value a rate applies to, not the rate itself — are one of the most important, and most recently changed, pieces of the Texas property tax picture for an owner-occupied home:
None of these exemptions are automatic — a homeowner has to file for them with the county appraisal district. Confirm current exemption amounts and filing deadlines with your specific county's appraisal district before budgeting a tax bill.
This is the single most Houston-specific line item on this page, and it doesn't have a direct equivalent in most of our other coverage areas. A Municipal Utility District (MUD) is a special-purpose local government, with its own elected board and taxing authority, that developers set up to finance water, sewer, drainage, and sometimes road infrastructure for a new subdivision — typically one built outside a city's limits, in unincorporated county land. The district issues bonds to build that infrastructure up front, and homeowners repay the debt over time — commonly 15 to 30 years — through a dedicated MUD property-tax line that's stacked on top of the county, school district, and any city rate that also applies.
MUD tax rates vary widely depending on how much bond debt a given district is still retiring — roughly $0.10 to $1.50+ per $100 of assessed value is a realistic range — so a home in a subdivision with a young, still-heavily-indebted MUD can carry a noticeably higher total tax rate than a comparable home in an older, already-built-out area with no MUD at all. There are over 900 MUDs across the greater Houston area, concentrated especially in newer master-planned communities in Katy, Cypress, and Sugar Land — three of the nine areas in our Houston guide. A property's MUD status (and that district's current rate and remaining debt) is checkable through the relevant county appraisal district before you buy, and it's genuinely worth checking rather than assuming a listed tax rate already reflects the full picture.
Because Texas property tax is the sum of several independently-set rates (county, city, school district, and sometimes a MUD), there is no single "the rate is X" figure for the Houston metro the way a simpler single-jurisdiction tax might work. The figure most commonly cited for comparison purposes is an effective rate — total tax paid as a percentage of home value, blending all the applicable layers together:
| Jurisdiction | Effective rate context | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Harris County (blended effective rate) | Commonly cited around 1.4%–1.5% | Combines county, city (where applicable), school district, and any MUD rate; varies by specific address |
| Texas statewide (Tax Foundation) | 1.40% effective rate on owner-occupied housing value | A different, broader methodology than county-specific effective-rate estimates — cited here for context, not as Houston's own number |
| Fort Bend, Montgomery, Brazoria, Galveston counties | Not independently confirmed at the individual-county level this session | Each runs its own appraisal district (FBCAD, MCAD, BCAD, GCAD) under the same statewide mechanism described in Section 1 — pull current rates directly from the relevant CAD before relying on a figure |
Rates change annually as counties, cities, and school districts each separately adopt new budgets, and Texas's own rate-setting and notice requirements mean last year's rate is rarely this year's rate. Rather than publish specific per-jurisdiction dollar figures that will go stale within a year, we've deliberately kept this table to effective-rate context and pointed you to each county's appraisal district (hcad.org for Harris, fbcad.org for Fort Bend, mcad-tx.org for Montgomery, brazoriacad.org for Brazoria, galvestoncad.org for Galveston) for a specific current-year number.
Texas uses a structured appeal process, run through each county's appraisal district. A homeowner who disagrees with their property's appraised value can file a protest with the local Appraisal Review Board (ARB) — an independent panel separate from the appraisal district itself — generally by May 15 or 30 days after the appraisal notice was mailed, whichever is later; confirm the exact current-year deadline with your specific county's appraisal district, since exact procedures and informal-review options vary somewhat by county. Beyond the ARB, a property owner can pursue binding arbitration or a judicial appeal in state district court as further review options.
The structural mechanics in Sections 1 through 3 — no state property tax, the homestead-exemption framework, and the MUD financing model — are durable and don't change often, though the specific exemption dollar amounts in Section 2 are exactly the kind of figures that move when Texas voters approve a new constitutional amendment, as happened twice in the last two years. The rate context in Section 4 is deliberately kept general rather than pinned to specific per-jurisdiction numbers that would go stale — we've flagged what we could and couldn't independently confirm rather than guess. If you spot something on this page that's changed, or notice a broken link, we'd like to know — see our contact information.