A Harris County Tax Deferral Delays the Bill, Not the Tax

For an owner who's 65 or older, or disabled, a deferral can be what keeps the house under them. Texas lets you push the property taxes on your homestead down the road for as long as you own the place and live in it, with nothing due while you stay put. On a fixed income in a hard year, that's room to breathe.

It is not an exemption, though, and the tax doesn't vanish. The balance keeps climbing the entire time, with 5% interest stacked on each year, and the full thing comes due once the deferral ends. That's generally inside 180 days, which in practice means when the home sells or the owner passes. The heirs settle it, or the sale does.

There's a trap that's easy to walk into. If there's a mortgage on the place, the deed of trust may still let the lender foreclose over unpaid taxes even with a deferral on file. That call goes to the mortgage company first, before the form is filed — file it without asking and the lender's answer arrives the hard way.