We buy houses in Ward County, TX

The county posts each unit's adopted rate. These are the 2025 rates per $100 of value:

• Ward County: $0.69
• Monahans-Wickett-Pyote school district: $1.01237
• City of Monahans: $0.33441
• City of Wickett: $0.15916

By our own math, a Monahans home in that school district paid about $2.04 per $100 in 2025. That leaves out any water district rate.

For 2026, the county's summary lists a county rate of $0.74.

Every school district must take $140,000 off a homestead's value. Owners 65 or older, or disabled, get $60,000 more (Tex. Tax Code 11.13).

By our own math, the $140,000 exemption saves up to $1,417 a year at the 2025 Monahans-Wickett-Pyote school rate.

Texas has no deed transfer tax. The state constitution bars a new tax on the sale of a home's title (Tex. Const. art. VIII, sec. 29).

Taxes are late if not paid before February 1 of the next year (Tex. Tax Code 31.02). The penalty is 6% the first month. It rises 1% a month to 12% on July 1. Interest adds 1% a month (Tex. Tax Code 33.01).

Unpaid taxes can end in a tax sale. It runs on the first Tuesday of the month, between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. (Tex. Tax Code 34.01).

You may still buy the property back. The time you get depends on what was sold (Tex. Tax Code 34.21):

• your homestead: two years
• land with an ag valuation: two years
• a mineral interest: two years
• other land: 180 days

The premium owed to the buyer is 25% in the first year and 50% in the second.

If you are 65 or older or disabled, an affidavit filed with Ward CAD can defer taxes on the home you live in (Tex. Tax Code 33.06).

The Handbook of Texas calls oil and gas quite important to the economy here. It says the county produced 668,715,000 barrels of oil from 1928 to January 1, 1991.

So minerals under a house are often owned or leased by someone else. Ward CAD's search lets you look up mineral accounts apart from real estate.

Inherited a house with no probate? A recorded affidavit of heirship becomes evidence of who the heirs are once it has been on record for five years (Tex. Estates Code 203.001).

A small estate affidavit is another path when the estate, not counting the homestead, is worth $75,000 or less (Tex. Estates Code 205.001).

Own a manufactured home on your own land? You can elect to treat it as real property. Within 60 days of getting the new statement of ownership, file it in the county real property records (Tex. Occ. Code 1201.2055).

Large parts of north Ward County are active, windblown sand dunes. The Handbook of Texas says they are subject to wind erosion.

Rain is scarce, about 12 inches a year on average. The Pecos River is the only stream that flows all year.

Farming here has had hard luck. In 1904 an earthen dam on the Pecos burst, and the flood salted many farms near Barstow. Less than 1% of the county is prime farmland today.

Water is found at shallow depths in the sand hills. If your place has a well, have its records ready for a buyer.