One city, five counties, and a school district line that changes the bill

What buying in Fort Worth actually involves

The property tax is the largest cost of owning here after the mortgage, and it is worked out unit by unit. A house in the City of Fort Worth and Fort Worth ISD, the school district more of the city's residents live in than any other, pays six: Tarrant County, the City, the school district, Tarrant County College, JPS Health Network, which is the county's hospital district, and the Tarrant Regional Water District, and their 2025 rates add to 2.18908 per $100 of value. Each but one takes a homestead exemption off first, the school district a flat $140,000, the county, the City and JPS 20% each and the college 1%, which the Tax Code's floor makes $5,000; the water district, which pays for the levees of the Fort Worth Floodway, takes none. So on the $327,000 median house an owner who lives in it pays about $5,044 a year and a landlord about $7,158. The exemptions are not automatic: you apply to the Tarrant Appraisal District, and in the year you buy you get a prorated one only if the seller had none. A house in Keller, Eagle Mountain-Saginaw, Crowley or another school district, in Denton County, or inside an improvement district pays a different bill.

The value the rates are charged on is reset every year, and an owner has until 15 May, or 30 days after the appraisal district mails the notice if that is later, to protest it. On a homestead the taxable value may rise no more than 10% a year once the owner has held the exemption, and the cap ends with the sale, so a buyer is taxed on the full value from the first bill and the seller's bill understates the buyer's. The City's own line is moving: on 15 September 2026 the Council adopted 0.70565 per $100 for 2026, 3.565 cents above the 0.67 of 2025, by 7 votes to 4, and the City's fees for stormwater, water, sewer and garbage rose with it. Values fell faster, so the City expects the average home's City bill to come out about $8 lower.

Where the street is matters as much as what the house is. Fort Worth runs into five counties and more than a dozen school districts, and on the Census Bureau's 2020 blocks only 473,224 of its 918,915 people lived in Fort Worth ISD, with 119,281 in Keller ISD, 83,129 in Eagle Mountain-Saginaw ISD and 81,929 in Crowley ISD. Some neighborhoods also come with an improvement district: in Park Glen or Heritage the owner pays about 0.15 per $100 on top of the six rates, and in the bond-financed districts such as Walsh Ranch each lot owes a fixed yearly installment, $482 to $1,559 for fiscal 2027 in its first phase. Beyond the limits, in the City's extraterritorial jurisdiction, utility districts levy up to 1.00 per $100. The City's own down payment loan, up to $25,000, is only for a house inside the limits.

The ground and the river are the other two maps to read. Fort Worth sits on the Barnett Shale, and the City's layer counts 2,351 gas wells inside its limits, 1,955 of them producing, on 529 pad sites; a new well needs its neighbors' waivers or the Council's approval to come within 600 feet of a house, but nothing stops a house going up beside a pad that is already there, and the minerals under a lot are often not the seller's to sell. The Trinity runs through the city between levees, and in September 2026 the Army Corps of Engineers let the $169.4 million contract for the northern half of a 1.5-mile bypass channel that is meant to take 2,400 acres out of the floodplain and leave an 800-acre Panther Island north of downtown. Hail is the insurer's map: it is the largest cause of paid homeowners losses in Texas, $4.93 billion in 2024, so the roof's age and the policy's hail deductible belong in the offer, and a homeowners policy does not cover rising water at all.

Moving to Fort Worth: check these before you commit

• The appraisal district's value for the house, the protest deadline on this year's notice, and what the 10% homestead cap has done to the seller's bill, since the cap ends on the sale
• Which county, school district, improvement district and utility district tax the address, from the Tarrant Appraisal District's record rather than the mailing address
• Any improvement district assessment or annual installment on the lot, from the seller's notice and the City's service plan for the district
• Gas wells and pad sites near the lot on the City's map, and who owns the minerals under it, from the title commitment
• The roof's age, whether the homeowners policy pays replacement cost or depreciated value on it and what its wind and hail deductible is, and FEMA's flood map for the exact address