Gary Adrian was angry when he spoke at April’s Lubbock Central Appraisal District board meeting.
The founder of Lubbock-based Ace of Texas, which represents citizens protesting their annual property tax appraisal, accused a company called Ownwell of delaying their batch of protests, creating a backlog which led to a settlement.
“Guys, if I sound a little bit irritated, it’s because I am. We’ve always tried to do the right thing. We’ve always met with our LCAD appraisers,” Adrian said during the meeting.
Ownwell intentionally overloaded the system, Adrian said, adding his company tried to be fair with LCAD.
Ownwell got reductions on 4,000 out of 4,800 protests. Adrian’s company had 5,000 successful protests out of 12,000 submitted – less than half the percentage Ownwell got, said Tim Radloff, LCAD’s chief appraiser.
But Radloff said the problem was caused by a member of LCAD’s Appraisal Review Board telling his colleagues to only trust Ownwell.
“There was an instance, and it was overheard by two of our staff members, that the panels were instructed to disregard the district’s evidence and only to go with Ownwell’s evidence to move the process along,” Radloff said.
Radloff said it’s hard to defend the appraisal values if the Appraisal Review Board (ARB) refuses to listen. Radloff said he feared the district would lose more value if ARB panels were no longer listening to the evidence. That prompted him to negotiate a settlement.
The problem is over, Radloff said. The person who instructed the ARB to disregard LCAD’s evidence is longer with the ARB. His term ended in December.
Adrian and Jim Baxa, LCAD board member, believe the problem is not over because it’s bigger than one person on the ARB board.
“The appraisal system in Texas is broken at its core,” Baxa said.
LubbockLights.com reached out to the Ownwell customer service and marketing departments by email. Customer service wrote back just to say we should reach out via email to marketing (which we did). We also tried reaching out by phone, but we were unable to reach the company’s marketing or public relations.
LubbockLights.com also reached out to Adrian’s company to ask questions about his comments in the LCAD meeting. But our messages were not returned.
Proposed solutions
Neither Radloff or Baxa accused Ownwell of violating the law – or doing anything in violation of the rules.
“I don’t blame them for doing it. They take advantage of a broken system, and they caused a bigger problem that is going to spiral out of control.” Baxa said.
“The only solution is to … say, ‘We’re going to … value the property at either – the homeowner’s choice – either the value that they purchased it at. … Or, if they choose to keep that value hidden from the appraisal district, which is their right, then it can be done at the current appraisal system.’ They get to choose, and then it stays that way forever until they sell it,” Baxa said.
That solves two problems from Baxa’s perspective. It alleviates the property tax protest volume at LCAD. But also gives homeowners a way to escape the problem of “appraisal creep” where taxable values drive higher tax bills even when the rates stay the same.
Carl Tepper, state representative from Lubbock, said he’d prefer to keep things simple. He thinks putting a yearly 2.5 percent cap on appraisal values is easier for most homeowners, adding he favors an 8 percent appraisal cap on businesses and rental properties.
Tepper, as a a commercial agent/property manager, said he represented a client once with a 53.5 percent appraisal creep. As a lawmaker, he heard stories of up to 200 percent in a single year.
We asked Radloff if he thinks state lawmakers could offer a solution of gaming the system.
Radloff said, “I’m not going to go down that road” – meaning he would prefer not to talk about solutions for lawmakers to consider.
“It’s up to them to do that. I’m just a messenger. I do whatever they do. Whatever they set in statute, I’m going to do no matter what,” Radloff said.
The problem
Adrian said Ownwell entered Lubbock in 2021. He claimed Ownwell didn’t just dump a long list of protests onto the LCAD last year. He said the company delayed and stonewalled so LCAD would have no choice but to reach a blanket settlement before the deadlines for protests were up.
Adrian also said a long list of local companies did not get the same blanket settlement as Ownwell.
Baxa said, “Ownwell got a deal because they played hardball.”
Adrian said the “deal” was an 8 percent reduction in taxable value for the vast majority of properties represented by Ownwell.
Radloff explained why LCAD and Ownwell agreed on an 8 percent reduction for a large group of protest cases.
“In the case of Ownwell, … they filed approximately 4,800 protests, and we had approximately 800 of them in the month of June [2025],” Radloff said.
Roughly a third of them got a reduction from the Appraisal Review Board, Radloff said, “ … anywhere from a high of 43 percent down to a low of 8 percent.”
“I made the decision, which I have the authority to do as chief appraiser, that we negotiate with Ownwell,” Radloff said.
For a time Radloff was looking at major losses of the values his appraisers had already set.
“I have to protect the appraisal roll. … I felt like I had to make a decision, and that’s what I did,” Radloff said.
Baxa addressed fairness.
“If he’s going to make such a deal with Ownwell, he has to be ready to make that same deal with Ace of Texas and the other dozen or so tax agents that we have here in Lubbock County,” Baxa said.
Radloff said outside of the issue with the person on the ARB forcing a settlement, LCAD treats everyone “fair and square” with no favoritism.
“It’s unfortunate that Gary [Adrian] feels the way he does, but it happens throughout the state where there’s negotiations – whether it be with somebody who files 4,800 protests or 12,000 protests,” Radloff said.
But when asked if there’s a problem with “gaming the system,” Radloff said that’s already been happening.
“To me, that’s kind of gaming the system where you’re filing protests on everything, whether you need to or not. That’s already a problem where they are overloading the system. That’s happening statewide,” Radloff said.
Going to get worse
During that LCAD board meeting, Adrian said, “This hog that fed at this trough last year is coming back. And she’s going to be a lot bigger and a lot hungrier.”
Baxa thinks not only will Ownwell do it again in the coming tax year but so will all the other companies representing local property taxpayers.
“Basically, every large county is having the same exact issue. And it’s even worse in some of the very, very large counties. You could imagine how many tens of thousands of protests a Dallas or Houston or Fort Worth get,” Baxa said.
Ownwell exposed a flaw in the system, according to Baxa. Everyone else is going to copy the strategy, he also said.
“It’s no more Mr. Nice Guy from these guys [the tax consulting companies], and they’re going to do the same thing that Ownwell has done. And it’s actually going to become a worse problem for the district. … I don’t care if the district hired every possible person to hear protests. There is zero possibility of this getting done in time. And we’re going to end up with an even more severe backlog this year.” Baxa said.
Correction: Carl Tepper’s profession is a commercial agent/property manager. This story was corrected and updated.
