What Happens When Only Part of Your Property Is Taken?

The before and after method

Texas measures a partial taking by comparing the market value of the whole tract immediately before the taking with the market value of the remainder immediately after, with the project constructed. The difference is the compensation.

Stated plainly: if the whole tract was worth a certain amount, and the land you keep is worth less than that amount minus the acres taken, the shortfall is damage to the remainder and it belongs in the figure.

What the remainder means

The remainder is everything you still own after the strip is carved out. It may be one piece or two. It may still function as it did, or it may not. The analysis asks what a buyer would now pay for it, knowing the project is there.

Common property impacts

• Access. A driveway closed or relocated, a median that removes turning movements, a longer approach.
• Parking and circulation. Spaces lost, truck movements blocked, loading areas cut.
• Land configuration. A tract split in two, an irregular remnant, a strip too narrow to use.
• Property use. Grazing rotation broken, irrigation severed, equipment routes lengthened.
• Development. A homesite or building envelope foreclosed by the corridor.

Easement or fee

Where the entity takes an easement rather than title, you keep ownership of the strip and continue paying taxes on it while losing much of its use. The before and after analysis still applies, and the easement terms decide how much use is actually lost.

Getting the analysis right

Photograph the property before construction. Keep the alignment sheets. Record how the land is used across a full year, because a corridor that looks harmless in January can be ruinous at harvest or during calving. That evidence is what turns an assertion about the remainder into a number.