Texas Homestead Exemption in 2026: The Deadlines New Buyers Miss

You can file for your Texas homestead exemption the day you close on your house. Not next January. The day you own it and live in it. That rule change (Texas Tax Code 11.42(f), on the books since 2022) is the single biggest thing new buyers still get wrong, and it quietly costs them a few hundred to well over a thousand dollars in school taxes for no reason at all.

So lets talk about the deadlines, because the exemption itself is the easy part. The exemption knocks $140,000 off your home’s value for school district taxes (Proposition 13, which Texas voters passed back in November 2025, is what raised it to that $140,000). On a home taxed at roughly a 1% school rate, the full exemption is worth about $1,400 a year back in your pocket, every year, for as long as you own the place. Filing takes about ten minutes and costs nothing. And yet I watch people leave it sitting on the table.

I have been selling homes around Austin and the Hill Country for going on 19 years, and if there is one form I wish every buyer would fill out the week they close, it is this one. It is not the fun part of buying a house, I know. But it is free money, and the rules recently changed in your favor in ways most people never heard about. So here is the whole thing, deadlines first.

What the homestead exemption actually saves you

Quick version, because I am not going to re-explain the whole thing here (our complete guide to the Texas homestead exemption covers every angle if you want the deep dive). The exemption applies to your primary residence only. It lowers the taxable value of your home for school district taxes. Not city, not county, just schools, which is usually the biggest line on your tax bill anyway.

Here is where it stands in 2026:

• Everyone gets $140,000 off the taxable value for school taxes. That is the number Proposition 13 raised it to (it was $100,000 before, and $40,000 not that long ago).
• Over 65 or disabled? You get another $60,000 on top, for $200,000 total. Proposition 11 bumped that piece up from a measly $10,000. And once you turn 65 and file, your school taxes get a ceiling, they can go down but they cannot go up. That one matters a lot if you are on a fixed income right.
• The 10% cap kicks in too. Once your home has a homestead exemption, its taxable value cannot climb more than 10% a year (Tax Code 23.23), no matter what the market does around you. Unless you add a pool or a second story, that kind of thing resets it.

If you want the full story on how the exemption got this big and how to fight your appraised value at the same time, I wrote about the 2026 exemption increase and property tax protests here. This post is about one thing: the deadlines, and why new buyers keep tripping over them.

The deadlines new buyers actually miss

1. You can file the day you close

This is the big one. It used to be that if you bought a house in, say, June, you had to wait until January 1 of the next year to even qualify, and then file that spring. You ate a full year of taxes with no exemption. That was the rule for decades.

Not anymore. Since 2022, Texas Tax Code 11.42(f) lets you claim the exemption for the rest of the purchase year, prorated from your closing date, as long as the previous owner did not already have a homestead exemption on the place that year. So if you buy from a landlord or an investor or a builder (nobody who was living there and claiming it as their homestead), you can file the week you get your keys and start saving immediately.

One catch worth knowing. For this purchase-year filing, you have to apply before the first anniversary of the date you acquired the property. So do not sit on it for 13 months and expect the proration. File it now.

2. The regular deadline is April 30

For the standard yearly exemption, the application is due before May 1 of the tax year (Tax Code 11.43). So April 30 is your last clean day. If you bought last year and just want your exemption in place for this year going forward, this is the date that matters. Circle it, or better yet, just file the moment you close and never think about it again.

3. Miss it? You still have about two years (but do not count on it)

Ok, so you forgot. It happens. Texas actually gives you a real safety net here, which most people have no idea about. Under Tax Code 11.431, the appraisal district has to accept a late homestead application if you file it within two years of the delinquency date for that year’s taxes. If you already paid the higher bill, they refund you the difference.

So if you bought two years ago and never filed, go check right now, you may be owed money. But do not treat this as your plan. Deadlines get missed, refunds get complicated, and the clean move is always to file up front.

4. New construction and mid-year moves have a wrinkle

If you built a house or moved in partway through the year, you qualify once you actually own it and occupy it as your principal residence. Same idea as above. But here is the part that surprises new owners, especially on new builds: the 10% appraisal cap does not protect you in year one. Under the law, the cap starts as of January 1 of the year after you acquire the home (Tax Code 23.23(c-1)).

What that means in real life is your first full-year appraisal can jump a lot before the cap ever kicks in, particularly if you bought raw land and built, or bought early in a new development before values ran up. It is not a mistake on anyone’s part, it is just how the timing works. So do not panic when year two’s notice looks bigger than you expected. Get the exemption filed and let the cap start doing its job.

How to file in Travis, Williamson, and Hays County (for free)

The form is the same everywhere: Texas Comptroller Form 50-114. You file it with the appraisal district for the county your home sits in. All three of our local ones take it online and it is genuinely free:

• Travis County: Travis Central Appraisal District (TCAD)
• Williamson County: Williamson Central Appraisal District (WCAD)
• Hays County: Hays Central Appraisal District (Hays CAD)

You will need proof you own the home, a driver’s license, and sometimes a utility bill. That is it. Ten minutes, online, done. That is not hard right.

Now let me warn you about something, because it makes me a little crazy. A few weeks after you close, you are going to get a very official looking letter in the mail. It will have your new address on it, maybe an urgent deadline, and an offer to file your homestead exemption for you for $45, or $65, or whatever they are charging that season. Throw it away. You never, ever have to pay anyone to file this. The appraisal district does not charge, and the form is one page. These outfits prey on brand new buyers who do not know the exemption is free. As a realtor it does not make me a dime to tell you that, but somebody should.

The mistakes I see over and over

Even people who know the exemption exists still fumble it. And look, I have missed my share of paperwork deadlines in life (ask my wife about the year I let our car registration lapse, I sell houses, I am not exactly a filing wizard), so this is zero judgment. But lets keep you from doing the ones that actually cost money:

• Their driver’s license address does not match the house. This is the number one reason applications get kicked back. The law (Tax Code 11.43(j)) requires the address on your Texas driver’s license or state ID to match the property address on the application. So update your license before you file, not after.
• They assume it transfers with the house. It does not. The seller’s homestead exemption does not come with the property. You are a new owner, you file your own.
• They forget after a move. Your exemption is tied to the home you live in. Sell and buy a new one, and you file fresh on the new place. The old exemption does not follow you across town.
• They miss the over-65 add-on. When you turn 65, you have to file again to add the senior exemption and the tax ceiling. Nobody flips that switch for you automatically.

Richard Thaler’s whole point in Nudge is that people do not skip the good option because it is not worth it, they skip it because of friction, one more form, one more login, one more thing. The homestead exemption is the cleanest example of that I know. The savings are real and the effort is tiny, and the only thing standing between most people and a few hundred bucks a year is a form they keep meaning to get to.

Yes, the appraisal district will check on you

One more thing that catches folks off guard. The appraisal districts now re-verify homestead exemptions periodically, at least once every five years under the law (Tax Code 11.43(h-1)). So do not be alarmed if, a few years down the road, you get a letter asking you to confirm the home is still your primary residence.

Just do not ignore it. If you toss that letter in the pile with the junk mail (the same pile the $65 filing scam went in, I get the confusion), you can actually lose your exemption and watch your tax bill jump. Read anything that comes from the CAD directly, respond, and you are fine.

Get this handled before you forget

Property taxes are a huge part of what you actually pay to own a home in Central Texas, and this is the one lever that is completely in your control and completely free. If you want to understand the full tax picture, our complete guide to Austin property taxes breaks down rates, exemptions, and how to pay less, and if your appraised value looks too high, the property tax protest guide walks you through fighting it.

Here is my honest pitch. Every buyer I work with in Lakeway, Bee Cave, Dripping Springs, and around Austin gets the homestead exemption checklist at closing, because I would rather you save the money than forget the form. If you are buying, already bought and are not sure you ever filed, or just want someone to double check you did it right, reach out to me directly. It costs you nothing to ask, same as the exemption.