Writer urges property value research

To The Eagle:

As a Puget Island property owner I now have a (once every four years) "Notice of Value" for our property on Welcome Slough (Assessment Year 2010/Tax Year 2011). The notice on the lower left reads: "If you believe that the new value is substantially incorrect compared to your estimate of market value, please call the Assessors Office for information...."

That notice sounds simple enough, but what is behind the "new value" for each of our properties? State statutes, regulations and guidelines define the "playing field" for determination of "market value" by Assessor Office personnel. Any challenge to their result should be based upon a error we find in their appraisal process. It might be difficult for us to find an error if we do not have access to all the data that the Appraiser is supposed to use. Like four years of sales information. The new web site will have the capability for public access to sales data from their home computer, but that portion of the web site is not yet up and running.

The market value of our properties is supposed to be based upon "acceptable" sales (within the time window) of "like properties." A foreclosure sale is not considered acceptable and is not to be used. A sale within a family may have to be excused as well. The "Location - Comment" column in the property sales report does contain the word "Foreclosure" for a number of sales.

However, I do not know if a sale with a comment "Bargain" or "Estate" is an "acceptable" sale. A necessary step in this process is to identify all "like properties" to form a pool of sales history used to assign a value to each like property. The sales report has a column titled "Type" which is based upon the use of the property. About 37 different "types" of property have been defined over the years. Our property on Welcome Slough has the code "RS" described as "Residential On Slough Frontage." Of the 371 sales in a recent sales report (that covered 40 months) I find 10 with the "RS" code. Three of the 10 have the word "foreclosure" in the comment column and 1 has the words "Estate Sale." After removing these four sales only six sales remain from January 2007 to 1 January 2010.

Going back to the two earlier sales reports I find one sale in the four year period that was not on the latest sales report. Only seven sales of "RS" type property during the four year re-evaluation sales window that could be considered "acceptable," but these properties are on different sloughs. Are the frontages on all of these four sloughs equal in value? I do not think that is reasonable. If I only consider sales on Welcome Slough for "my" pool of "like properties" only one "acceptable" sale remains. With the above assessment of "acceptable like" sales during the four year period in view the County Assessor could/should have claimed "insufficient acceptable sales for type RS properties" and not re-evaluated the land portion of our property. Each type of property needs to have a statistically significant number of "acceptable" sales to support the re-evaluation process for that type of property. At least one prior Assessor did a pass for the land portion of Puget Island properties because of"lack of sales."

A value per slough front foot is (somehow) established and applied for the first 100 feet of frontage. Additional frontage is valued at half that value per foot. I was told that each of my 100 front feet is allegedly "worth" $1,407. I need to learn what sales data was used to justify that new evaluation. I encourage all slough frontage property owners to ask just how the value for their footage was determined.

Please share results of your analysis.

Don Koenig

Puget Island