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Seattle Tax Assessments

August 24th, 2008 · Comments · By Matt

Outraged at my tax assessments I spent some time comping both my units and was surprised to find that my Meritage unit comps higher than what I paid for it and Trace is likely holding its value. What’s odd is that the units I’m finding are good comps are either at the Press or Braeburn and were never on the MLS. So it looks like I have no grounds for an appeal.

How are other folks finding their assessments?

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  • Yes, I looked at only 2007 sales for comps and excluded everything before and after...
  • jcricket
    You understand there are some legal limitations to how your assessed value is figured out. They CANNOT consider this years value. This is supposed to smooth out spikes, but it also misses big dips.

    More importantly, your assessed value and property tax increase (if any) are not directly linearly related, partially because of the overall property tax cap passed a few years back. Your assessment could go way up, but because of how taxes are spread around, your taxes could stay the same or decreased.
  • Matt, you can try contacting a tax advisor who works in the Department of Assessment at 206.296.5202 to help you with the appeal. They have more extensive and recent sales records for you condo.

    Generally, 20% of the time, the King County Assessor after receiving your petition and comps will recommend reduction in the value. Unless the comps are not compelling enough to support reduction in the value, it will go to the department citizen members for review.
  • Yeah, I figure my tax assessed value is about 5% off of my market value.

    It's funny because I thought it'd be easy to get comps to challenge their numbers but I couldn't find any.
  • Dan L
    My Tax assessed value has always been much lower (about 25%) than my estimated market value. However this year I'd say my value has flat-lined/decreased marginally and my tax value jumped up quite a bit. So now they're about the same, about 5% different. Dang.
  • I took the 2008/2007 past sales and filtered them down to 1 bedrooms and built after 2000. For Trace the only comparables in the square footage range I considered were from the 19th Ave Lofts. They comp a little low relative to Trace but I think 12th has more appeal than 19th.

    While the comparable pricing for both units look good what's worrying is the volume. It's pretty low in both ranges, more so in the Trace range.
  • Eric
    Matt, what buildings did you find were good comps for Trace? Seems like it's a rather unique building for Capitol Hill. I'm curious because I'm wondering what buildings (other than Trace) will be good comps for Brix when it's done.
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