How do I file for a homestead exemption in Kendall County, Texas?

File with the Kendall Appraisal District at kendallad.org, not Bexar CAD. Boerne is in Kendall County. You must have owned and occupied the home as your principal residence on January 1, and the application is due before May 1. There is no fee to file directly with the district.

Start with the district, because this is where people go wrong

Boerne is the county seat of Kendall County. It is not in Bexar County and it is not in the City of San Antonio. A Boerne homeowner files a homestead exemption with the Kendall Appraisal District (kendallad.org).

This trips up relocating buyers constantly, because "San Antonio" is the metro name, the airport, the MLS region and the way most people describe where they live. None of that changes jurisdiction. Bexar Appraisal District appraises property in Bexar County. It does not appraise property in Kendall County, and an application sent there for a Boerne home does not get forwarded into a different county's roll.

The same logic applies in reverse. Parts of Fair Oaks Ranch sit in Bexar and Comal counties as well as Kendall, because the city's limits span all three. The appraisal district is set by which county the parcel is in, not which city mails your water bill.

Where to actually file

This is the office. It is in Boerne, and it is not Bexar CAD (Kendall Appraisal District).


Address	118 Market Avenue, Boerne, TX 78006
Phone	(830) 249-8012
Email	requestinfo@kendallad.org
Appraisal and Operations hours	Monday to Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Tax Collection hours	Monday to Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Property search	esearch.kendallad.org
Taxpayer Portal — exemptions and protests	eprotest.kendallad.org

Two of those are worth separating, because people conflate them. esearch is the public property search — use it to pull the account for a specific parcel and see which taxing units are on it and what exemptions are currently posted. The Taxpayer Portal at eprotest.kendallad.org is the transactional side — it is where exemption applications and protests are handled online. The name says "eprotest," but exemptions run through it too, which is why homeowners who only want to file a homestead exemption sometimes skip past it.

Note the two different closing times. Appraisal and Operations runs to 5:00 p.m.; Tax Collection closes at 4:00 p.m. If you are driving to Boerne to pay something rather than to ask something, the earlier clock is the one that governs.

The two qualifying facts

You must have owned the home and occupied it as your principal residence on January 1 of the tax year (Texas Comptroller). Both, on that date. Not "closed in January." Not "moved in over the holidays and finalized later."

If you bought in the middle of the year, you were not the January 1 owner-occupant of that property. That is the ordinary rule, and it is the reason a first tax bill on a new purchase so often looks different from what the listing or the prior owner's bill suggested. Whether any exception applies to a specific purchase is a question for the appraisal district.

The deadline, and what happens if you miss it

The exemption application is due before May 1, which is generally described as April 30 (Texas Comptroller). The appraisal district publishes its current forms and filing instructions on its site.

Filing is free when you do it directly with the appraisal district. Newly closed buyers in Kendall County reliably get official-looking mail offering to file the homestead exemption for a fee. That is a paid service for a form you can submit yourself, and the letters are not from the county.

What the exemption stack looks like on a Kendall County bill

Your bill is not one tax. It is the sum of every taxing unit that covers your parcel, and each one handles exemptions separately. In Kendall County, the entities that appear on tax bills include Boerne ISD, Comfort ISD, City of Boerne, Kendall County, Kendall County MUD, Miralomas MUD, Cow Creek Groundwater Conservation District and Kendall County WCID #1 (Kendall Appraisal District).

The mandatory piece is the school district's $140,000 residence homestead exemption for 2026, raised from $100,000 by Proposition 13, approved by voters in November 2025 and implemented through SB 4, 89th Legislature (Texas Comptroller). On top of that, any taxing unit may adopt a local option exemption of up to 20% of appraised value with a $5,000 minimum, and a county collecting a farm-to-market road or flood control tax must give $3,000.

Which local options each Kendall County entity has actually adopted, and at what amount, is published on the appraisal district's adopted tax rates and exemptions page. Read that page rather than assuming — adopted exemptions are a local decision made entity by entity, and they can change year to year.

The over-65 and disability freezes, by entity

Kendall Appraisal District notes that some jurisdictions offer over-65 and disability tax "freezes." The ones it names are the City of Boerne, Boerne ISD, Comfort ISD and Kendall County (Kendall Appraisal District).

That is a meaningful local detail. The school district tax ceiling for owners 65 and older is required statewide, but a city or county freeze is a local option, and not every Texas city or county has one. If you are 65 or older and moving into Boerne from somewhere else in Texas, the entity-by-entity picture here is different from what you left, and the appraisal district is the place to confirm what applies to your parcel.

Owners 65 or older or disabled also get an additional $60,000 school district exemption on top of the general homestead amount, and other taxing units may adopt a local option of at least $3,000 (Texas Comptroller).

What filing also turns on

Once a homestead exemption is in place, the property gets the 10% cap on annual increases in net appraised value. In a county that grew 20.3% between 2020 and 2025, that cap does real work over time — and it resets to market value when the property sells, which is why a new owner's bill can jump well past what the seller was paying.

Where the tax rates actually come from

The appraisal district sets value and administers exemptions. It does not set tax rates. Rates are adopted by each taxing unit's own governing body, and they move independently.

For context on scale: the City of Boerne rate was 0.4716 per $100 of taxable value for 2025, the same as 2024, after 0.4766 in 2023 and 0.4510 in 2022 (Kendall County). Boerne ISD adopted 1.0109 for 2025 — 0.6969 maintenance and operations plus 0.3140 debt — after 0.9909 in 2024, 0.9932 in 2023, 1.1786 in 2022 and 1.2046 in 2021 (Kendall County). Current adopted rates for every Kendall County entity are posted on the county's tax rate information page and on the appraisal district's page.

Practical sequence after you close

Confirm the parcel is in Kendall County, not Bexar or Comal.
Wait until the deed is recorded and the appraisal district shows you as owner. Look the account up at esearch.kendallad.org to check.
File the residence homestead application directly with Kendall AD, free — through the Taxpayer Portal, by mail or in person at 118 Market Avenue.
If you are 65 or older, disabled, or a disabled veteran, file for those exemptions at the same time — they are separate from the general homestead exemption.
Check the following year's notice of appraised value to confirm the exemption actually posted.

Step 5 gets skipped, and it is the one that catches a filing that never landed.

Eligibility, the current application form and the status of your exemption are all determined by the Kendall Appraisal District. For how an ownership change, a trust, an LLC or an inheritance affects your exemption, talk with a Texas real estate attorney, and take the tax consequences to a CPA.

Questions about a specific property?

Call or text 830-446-3847 · Email heath.shepard@kw.com

This page explains how homestead exemption filing works in Kendall County. It is not tax or legal advice. Exemption eligibility is determined by the Kendall Appraisal District, and tax consequences should go to a CPA.