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open-austin
Liberate Appraisal Data
The repo for this idea is here!
"How Might We" Statement
How might we improve access to parcel appraisal data, because we know that the data is difficult and costly to access? This project has the goal of liberating Austin-area appraisal district data by making it available in an open, usable format. Travis, Williamson, and Hays are the target appraisal districts.
In terms of publicly-available real estate data, appraisal district data is without question the most granular and extensive. Appraisal districts maintain annually-updated, parcel-level data of the appraised value of land and buildings of every property in the county. Appraisal districts also keep records of the age and type of buildings on a property, as well as any tax exemptions granted.
Unfortunately, appraisal datasets are costly and difficult to access. A single tax year of Travis County appraisal data will set you back $55, the GIS shapefile costs an additional $25, and you’ll need Microsoft Access to unpack the files.
Link (more details/brain dump/alpha)
open-austin/liberate-appraisal-data
Who will use/benefit from this project?
Homeowners, renters, civic hackers, journalists, affordable housing advocates, everyone.
Project Needs (dev/design/resources)
- Data wranglers, web developers, government outreachers.
- Financial support to purchase appraisal data
- Data and web hosting
Status (experiment, alpha, beta, official)
Alpha
Might be worth writing a one-pager for people to understand the policy issue. Then distribute to the County Commissioners. Or even some candidates like Jeff Travillion and David Holmes.
This could be an effective tactic: http://chihacknight.org/blog/2016/02/16/chi-hack-nights-open-data-pledge-for-cook-county-clerk-of-the-circuit-court.html
I don't know exactly what the appraisal data is, is this something that's in the travis tcad db?
Edit: the reason I ask is because I think I have a copy of the full DB somewhere
I have published several in-depth investigations regarding the Travis Central Appraisal District (TCAD) and exposed numerous defects in the system. Here are links:
- Appraisal records hidden from public view (Nov. 18, 2011). This piece resulted in immediate action by TCAD to make property owners prove they were entitled to confidentiality: http://www.theaustinbulldog.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=162:appraisal-records-hidden-from-public-view&catid=3:main-articles
- Homestead exemptions rife with abuse (Dec. 20, 2013, Part 1 of 2): Hundreds of homeowners were not billed for all property taxes due because they had more than the one legal exemption: http://www.theaustinbulldog.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=266:homestead-exemptions-rife-with-abuse&catid=3:main-articles
- Homestead exemptions a tax loophole (Feb. 27, 2014, Part 2 of 2): The appraisal district relied mostly on homeowners' statements and provided no scrutiny. At that point these articles had caused collection of more than $300,000 in back taxes because of these reports, which also exposed major problems in how data is kept and needs for improvements. http://www.theaustinbulldog.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=268:homestead-exemptions-a-tax-loophole&catid=3:main-articles
I would really like to be part of any efforts to help Liberate Appraisal Data.
@davemcphee yes, it's the full TCAD database we're interested in. What year(s) do you have and can you give them to us?
I don’t have the full year. My appraisal data project only pulled the properties that had homestead exemptions. Now of those all I seem to have are spreadsheets.
Hi John,
I have the full 2015 dump, in mysqldump format, a little over 8GB. No idea how to get it you :( 2 DVDs in the post? I know it's 2016 but 8GB is still a decent file size...
On Mon, Mar 21, 2016 at 7:32 PM John Clary [email protected] wrote:
@davemcphee https://github.com/davemcphee yes, it's the full TCAD database we're interested in. What year(s) do you have and can you give them to us?
— You are receiving this because you were mentioned.
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/open-austin/project-ideas/issues/50#issuecomment-199558682
Can you upload it to S3? https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/amazon-s3-multipart-upload/
If you're willing to do that we can figure out the details on Slack.
@AustinBulldog no worries. thanks for your interest. we will be drafting a letter to send to TCAD executives and would welcome your support.
Hi all, just checking in on this. I'm thinking about buying the 2016 TCAD data but don't want to do so if anyone else already has.
Not quite yet.
Tyler
On Apr 12, 2017, at 1:12 AM, Andrew Nelson [email protected] wrote:
@tylermarkham did you buy the data?
— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or mute the thread.
I am planning to buy the Tax Office (not appraisal office) data today though.
On Apr 12, 2017, at 1:12 AM, Andrew Nelson [email protected] wrote:
@tylermarkham did you buy the data?
— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or mute the thread.
Posting this here for folks interested: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/7940439/tcad-housing-appraisal-records-1987-2017
There is some conversation around this in ##liberateappraisaldata in our slack. Get your slack invite at slack.open-austin.org
