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Company History, Brief Review of Clients and Cases
Equitax Property Consultants, Ltd. was begun by G.
Michael Wilson in the summer of 1992. After a long and successful career in
real estate brokerage and development, Mike began applying his expertise
and skills to helping clients reduce property tax expense.
1993 – Worked first major property, the Lyric
Center Building
in downtown Houston. Had to
promise $100,000 in savings or earn no fee. Saved the taxpayer $375,000.
1994 – Engaged first major client, Texas Commerce
Bank, now JPMorgan Chase. Saved the bank an average of almost $3.0 million
per year consistently for 10 years.
1995 – Hired by Randall’s Food and Drugs.
Developed aggressive theory for Business Personal Property which reduced
taxes well below competitors—average annual savings over $4 million.
1995 – Employed by Texas Tower Ltd. to evaluate and
protest Texas Commerce (now JPMorgan Chase) Tower. Achieved reductions for
two years near $50 million from proposed values, and saved the taxpayer
almost $8.5 million through 2005.
1996 – Engaged by Weingarten Realty Investors, one
of the largest and most successful REITs traded on the New York Stock
Exchange. We handle over 135 shopping centers, industrial and office
properties for WRI, saving the taxpayer over $5.0 million per year. We won
these significant cases:
- A shopping center bought for $36 million was
reduced to less than $23 million.
- A center assessed for a six year total of
$30.6 million was effectively reduced for the period to $2.2 million.
- A center purchased and assessed for $35
million was reduced for 5 years to effect a $1.0+ million refund and
taxes for the period at $1.8 million below taxes at cost.
- Pursuant to many years litigating Harris County values, the CAD noticed WRI in 2004 at $105
million below published opinions of value, saving $3.0 million up
front and with no fee.
- After 2005 ARB hearings, we had saved WRI
almost $6.0 million for the year; with litigation less than 1/2
complete, another $1.0 million in refunds—and for 2006, almost
$7.0 million saved at the ARB.
1998-2002 – Began work for United Investors Realty
Trust (now Equity One). Developed case (UIRT vs. Harris
County) finally decided by the
Texas Supreme Court in 2002 in favor of taxpayer; provided relief under
simpler equity method, now available to all Texas
taxpayers. Client property purchased for $15.2 million was reduced to $10.4
million, and later to $7.7 million.
2002 – Following their presentation by a major
accounting firm, we started working for Walgreen’s, achieving
assessments as low as half of cost and less than 40% of sales price. After
2 years splitting with other consultants and achieving as much as 10 times
better results, Equitax was awarded the majority of locations and won
administrative savings in 2005 of $2.3 million for the taxpayer.
2003 – Hired for the first time by RS Property
Management. For the four buildings which they own in Houston,
and after the previous consultants multi-year effort to achieve
taxpayer-approved values, we reduced the accounts by about $33 million,
saving $980,000. Properties then reduced to increasingly lower values every
year.
2004 – Engaged by HEB Food Markets in a test case.
When we reduced their premier Houston Central Market store to less than $17
per sq. ft. for imps (saving about $125,000 after previous flat fee
consultants achieved no reduction) we got a try for BPP (which was already
at a value agreeable to the taxpayer). Net result – another $480,000
saved. So for 2005, we got a lot more stores, and in the first ARB season,
saved HEB $1.6 million.
2005 – The publicly traded firm, AmREIT, hired
Equitax for its shopping center portfolio. Equitax far outperformed
previous consultants, and for the taxpayers recently purchased UpTown Park
Center (bought at $69 million) we achieved a final value of $27,642,140 and
savings of $358,000 from proposed; about $1.3 million from taxes at the
sales price.
In 2005, Equitax developed a state-of-the-art, web-based
tax, comp value, and budget report writing program through which our
clients can access their data (and theirs only) and run numerous reports to
review status, make budgets, reconcile bills, compare with the competition,
and more. For special client needs we can write programs to run virtually
any report.
2006 – Equitax completed development of Propertytaxsys
for Texas (www.propertytaxsys.com)
which provides Harris County property owners (to be expanded) the ability
to access tax data in a GIS format and create maps and comp spreadsheets to
determine equitable assessment and/or develop appeals. Preliminary analysis
is free to homeowners.
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