Property Taxes Are Dropping In Texas. Your Rent Prices Are Not.

Home ownership is typically known as a part of the "American Dream" that we've heard for decades. You get married, make a great salary, buy a home, have kids. Those are things that constitute "success" in the country.

Unfortunately, not all of those things are within reach for every person living in America. Some are making a low salary and just scraping by, some are making a decent salary but not enough to be able to sink away the cost of a down payment for a house.

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That leads to a lot of people renting a house or apartment to live in, considered "throwing away money". Now I guess it depends on how you look at it. Sure, if you own a home, you have equity in it and money you can draw on. However, home ownership comes with the expensive cost of repairs.

When you rent, that stuff is handled by the landlord. So while you tend to pay a bit more monthly to rent, sometimes it can come in handy to have someone else pay for and fix an issue.

Renting is a popular thing in Texas, in fact, 30% of its residents rent their home. Some of it because of convenience, some of it because of need. One thing renters worry about is the cost of their rent going up each year. It can be based on a myriad of factors, one of them being property tax in the area.

Right now, there is a proposed property tax break bill with the Texas government right now, and it appears it could be passed through sometime this week. Great news for homeowners right? You'll get to pay less on your mortgage and have a little more fun money.

That means renters are going to catch a break too right? Well, according to experts, that's probably not the case. Lawmakers believe that the break in property taxes will only end up benefitting the homeowner as they don't believe the landlords will pass these savings down to their renters.

The initial plan put in front of legislators would've refunded renters 10% of their rent that they paid the previous year. So say you spend $1500 per month on rent. You would've gotten back $150 for each month you paid rent last year, coming to a total of $1800. How nice would that be?

Unfortunately, the plan that looks like it'll pass through doesn't have that provision, so renters wont get any relief from it and shouldn't expect to either.