Can't express to you enough how important the ag exemption is in TX! I bought my land from a old man (18 acres) who owned 330 acres at one time. He sold 100 acres to a developer, who promptly chopped it up into 5 acre lots. These lots sat unused and unsold for a couple of yrs as the developer was running utilities, water,putting in main road and basically getting the place presentable after being farmland for a couple of hundred yrs. After he got the place fixxed up and ready for sell, the city made him come back and put in another road as the townfolks were squawking about the traffic his development was creating. The new road cut off 18 acres from the old mans property, thus letting me buy it. Since all this time had elapsed, all the lots (except mine)lost the ag exemption, thereby being taxxed at full city rates. 5 acre lots sold for around $275K, tax bill on each was around $5600 per yr.I was faced with paying an outragous amt in taxes, about 3 times what the lots were being taxxed at since I own 3 times as much land, or getting cattle out there as soon as I could. I figured I could pay for a fence with what the taxes would cost me in a couple of yrs. Needless to say, this $40K pipe and cable fence was money well spent in my opinion. My tax bill for the first two yrs, before we built the house was somewhere around $345 total!! DON'T LOSE THE EXEMPTION!!!

By the way, I clasified this land as improved pasture for the first yr. I just paid a guy to come bale the weeds for me and sent pictures in to the appraisal district, as hay / forage usage is an ag usage and qualifies for exemption.