What should I know about moving from California to the Texas Hill Country?
Texas has no state individual income tax, and it funds local government largely through property tax instead. Texas property is reappraised at market value every year, unlike California under Proposition 13. In Boerne, Boerne ISD's 2025 rate was 1.0109 and the City of Boerne's was 0.4716 per $100 of taxable value.
The trade you are actually making
California buyers arrive knowing about the income tax. They usually do not arrive knowing that the property tax side works on a completely different principle.
In California, Proposition 13 limits how much a property's assessed value can be reassessed while the same owner holds it. A long-time owner can be paying tax on a number that has very little to do with what the house would sell for today.
Texas does the opposite. Texas appraisal districts value property at market value, reappraised annually. Once a homestead exemption is in place there is a 10% per-year cap on the increase in net appraised value (Texas Comptroller), but that cap limits the speed of the climb, not the destination. Over time, a Texas tax bill tracks the market. A California tax bill, under Prop 13, tracks the purchase.
That is the structural difference, and it is the one that changes a monthly payment five years from now.
Do not let anyone hand you a single "effective rate" comparison between the two states. The honest way to do this is to price your specific Texas address against your specific California situation with a CPA, using the actual rates on the actual parcel.
Kendall County bills stack several entities
Boerne is the county seat of Kendall County. It is not in the City of San Antonio and not in Bexar County, and San Antonio ordinances do not apply here. Your appraisal district is Kendall Appraisal District, not Bexar CAD.
A Texas property tax bill is not one rate. It is the sum of every taxing entity whose boundary covers the parcel. In Kendall County the entities that appear on bills include Boerne ISD, Comfort ISD, the City of Boerne, Kendall County, Kendall County MUD, Miralomas MUD, the Cow Creek Groundwater Conservation District, and Kendall County WCID #1 (Kendall AD).
For a home inside the Boerne city limits, in Boerne ISD, the 2025 stack looked like this, per $100 of taxable value:
| Entity | 2025 rate |
|---|---|
| Boerne ISD | 1.0109 (M&O 0.6969 + debt 0.3140) |
| City of Boerne | 0.4716 |
| Kendall County | 0.377 (M&O 0.317976 + debt 0.059024) |
| Combined | 1.8595 |
Sources: Boerne ISD rates, City of Boerne rates, Kendall County rates.
That combined 1.8595 is before any special district on the parcel and before any exemption, and it is not a universal Boerne number. Part of the county is in Comfort ISD, whose 2025 rate was 0.9328 (Kendall County). An address in unincorporated Kendall County does not pay the city rate at all — but it also does not get city services, and it may sit inside a MUD or WCID that adds a line the table above does not show.
The school district is the largest single line on most bills, which is why the school exemption below matters so much.
Rates move every fall with each entity's budget. Boerne ISD was 0.9909 in 2024 and 1.1786 in 2022. The City of Boerne was 0.4766 in 2023. Kendall County has drifted down — 0.3827 in 2024 and 2023, 0.38770 in 2022, 0.412700 in 2021 — and its 2026 adopted rate is 0.373. A falling rate does not mean a falling bill, because the other half of the equation is the annually reappraised value.
Pull the current set, and the entity list for your specific parcel, from Kendall County Tax Rate Information or Kendall AD's adopted rates page rather than trusting a number in any article, including this one, as current. MUDs, the WCID and Cow Creek GCD vary parcel by parcel.
The offsets that bring the number down
Texas gives most of the relief back through homestead exemptions, and they are meaningful.
- School district residence homestead exemption: $140,000. Raised from $100,000 by Proposition 13, approved by Texas voters in November 2025 and implemented by SB 4, 89th Legislature, effective for tax year 2026 (Texas Comptroller). Yes — Texas's Proposition 13 and California's Proposition 13 are entirely unrelated measures that happen to share a number. Texas's raises an exemption. California's limits reassessment.
- Local option exemption: taxing units may offer up to 20% of appraised value, with a $5,000 minimum.
- Age 65 or older, or disabled: school districts must grant an additional $60,000, and other taxing units may adopt a local option of at least $3,000. Kendall AD notes that the City of Boerne, Boerne ISD, Comfort ISD and Kendall County offer over-65 and disability tax freezes (Kendall AD).
- Counties collecting a farm-to-market or flood-control tax must give a $3,000 residence homestead exemption.
- The 10% cap applies only once the homestead exemption is in place.
The January 1 rule nobody tells a relocating buyer
To claim a residence homestead exemption for a tax year, you must have owned and occupied the home as your principal residence on January 1 of that year (Texas Comptroller).
Close in February and you do not get the exemption for that year. You get it the following year. The application deadline is before May 1 — commonly stated as April 30.
That has two practical consequences a California buyer should plan around. The first year's tax bill is the unexempted bill, and if the lender escrows from that number the payment is higher than the one you will settle into. The second is that the 10% cap does not protect a property that does not yet carry a homestead exemption, so the first reappraisal after purchase can move a long way, particularly if the prior owner had held the property for years.
Filing the exemption is a form filed with Kendall Appraisal District. Nobody files it for you. It is not automatic, it does not carry over from the seller, and the title company does not do it at closing.
Sales tax, and the part of the bill that is not property
Texas state sales tax is 6.25%, with local add-ons to a combined maximum of 8.25%. Boerne is at the maximum: 6.25% state, 1.50% City of Boerne, 0.50% Kendall County (City of Boerne).
If you are buying something to rent out short-term, note that hotel occupancy tax runs 13% total in Boerne — 6% state plus 7% city — and Boerne has its own short-term rental ordinance that reaches both the city limits and the ETJ.
The county is growing, which is why reappraisal bites
Kendall County grew 20.3% between 2020 and 2025, from an estimated 44,568 to 53,289, driven mostly by domestic migration (Community Impact).
Rising values in a growing county plus annual reappraisal is exactly the mechanism that produces the tax-bill surprise in year two and year three. The protest process exists for this and it has a real deadline. Anyone moving here should know the appraisal notice arrives in spring and the window to protest is short.
Who answers which question
- Kendall Appraisal District — exemptions, appraised value, protests, whether your specific parcel sits in a MUD or WCID.
- A CPA or tax advisor — the overall California-versus-Texas comparison, what the move does to your return, and any capital gains question on the California sale.
- A Texas real estate attorney — deed restrictions, title, and marital property. Texas is a community property state, which changes how a married couple takes title compared with California's own community property rules.
- A lender — how the first-year unexempted tax bill affects the escrow estimate on your loan.
Related questions
- Does Texas really have no state income tax, and what do I pay instead?
- What are property taxes like in Boerne?
- What is the Texas homestead exemption?
- What is the 10% homestead cap in Texas?
- What surprises out-of-state buyers about buying a house in Texas?
Questions about a specific property?
Call or text 830-446-3847 · Email heath.shepard@kw.com
This page explains how Texas property and sales taxes are structured. It is not tax or legal advice. For a California-to-Texas comparison on your own numbers, talk with a CPA; for exemptions and appraised value on a specific parcel, contact Kendall Appraisal District.