Property Tax in Henderson County, Texas

What the Henderson County numbers mean

A median is the middle household: half of owner-occupied households in Henderson County pay more than $1,859, and half pay less. Your own bill is set by your home's assessed value, the exemptions you qualify for, and the local taxing districts your property sits in — so individual bills vary widely around the median.

Dividing the median tax by the median home value gives a derived effective rate of 0.98% for Henderson County. It is an estimate built from two survey medians, not the county's official rate, but it is a fair way to compare the local tax burden with other counties where home values are very different.

Henderson County by the numbers

*Estimate derived from Census medians (tax ÷ value), not an official rate.

Henderson County at a glance

• Median tax rank in Texas: #127 of 250 counties
• Median home value rank in Texas: #75 of 250
• Population rank in Texas: #49 of 250 (83,658 residents)
• Population density rank: #50 of 250 (96 people per square mile)
• Land area rank in Texas: #174 of 250 (873 sq mi, 0.3% of the combined county land area)
• Median tax as a monthly figure: $155; per $1,000 of home value: $0.98

How Henderson County compares

Of the 250 Texas counties with published data, 126 have a higher median property tax bill than Henderson County's $1,859, putting the county at #127 in the state. Its bill is about 55% lower than the state median of $4,111 and about 37% lower than the national median of $2,969.

Rates and values pull in opposite directions: an expensive housing market can produce big bills at ordinary rates. Here the derived rate is 0.98%, versus 0.98% derived nationally, and the median home value ranks #75 within Texas.

Some extra context for Henderson County: the median bill works out to about $155 a month, and the derived rate equals roughly $980 of tax per $100,000 of home value. The county is home to 83,658 people — the #49 most populous county in Texas, spread over 873 square miles, a density of about 96 people per square mile. Its median home value, $189,600, ranks #75 among the state's 250 counties with data.

Nationally, Henderson County's median bill of $1,859 ranks #1208 of 3133 counties with published data — inside the top 39% of counties by tax paid. The county accounts for about 0.3% of Texas's population, its median home value is about 27% below the state median, and at the derived rate the median home would hand over roughly 9.80% of its value in tax across a decade. Within the state, the distance from Henderson County to the most expensive county, Travis County ($7,487), is $5,628 a year.

Counties nearest Henderson County in the Texas ranking

Henderson County and its population peers

Population is a useful lens on these figures, so the table below sets Henderson County beside the counties closest to it in population anywhere in the country — communities of a similar scale operating under different state and local tax systems. Ranked by median tax paid within this peer group of 9, Henderson County's $1,859 bill is #4 of 9.

The closest population match is Midland County, Michigan (83,641 residents), where the median real estate tax paid is $2,771 on a median home value of $184,300 — $912 less than Henderson County pays.

Staying within Texas, the counties nearest Henderson County by population are Orange County (84,993 residents, median tax $2,036 on a median value of $163,400); Coryell County (83,772 residents, median tax $2,509 on a median value of $177,400); Walker County (78,292 residents, median tax $2,312 on a median value of $207,900); Wise County (72,359 residents, median tax $3,293 on a median value of $277,200). The spread in their median bills — all under the same state framework — shows how much of the property tax burden is decided county by county and district by district.

How the tax is worked out

The bill is built in stages. First the assessor puts a market value on the property. Exemptions — a homestead exemption above all — then reduce the taxable amount. Finally the combined local rate is applied. To see the scale: at the county's derived rate of 0.98%, each $100,000 of value corresponds to about $980 of tax a year, and a $400,000 home to roughly $3,920. Real bills use the official assessment and district rates, not this derived figure, so treat the example as a sense of scale only.

Illustrative bills in Henderson County at the derived rate

The derived rate of 0.98% is only an estimate built from medians, but applying it to different home values gives a sense of scale for Henderson County — and a quick way to compare with the state derived rate of 1.58% and the US figure of 0.98%:

Illustration only: real bills are computed from the assessed value, exemptions, and the combined rates of the property's actual taxing districts.

Checking your assessment in Henderson County

Believe your assessment is too high? The practical order of attack is: obtain your record card and audit it line by line; collect comparable recent sales in Henderson County; ask the assessor's office to correct anything plainly wrong; and, if the value still seems off, lodge a formal appeal ahead of the deadline printed on your assessment notice. Windows are short — often 30 to 90 days — and late appeals are usually rejected outright, however strong the case.

More Texas counties

• Coryell County, TX — $2,509
• Orange County, TX — $2,036
• Angelina County, TX — $1,872
• Walker County, TX — $2,312
• Victoria County, TX — $2,941
• Bowie County, TX — $2,091

Frequently asked questions