Assessor discusses annual appraisal process

by Diana Zimmerman

Beginning this year, the Washington state legislature will require all assessor’s offices to revalue every property in their county every year. On October 8, Wahkiakum County Assessor Bill Coons gave a presentation to more than a dozen interested citizens on how the changes affect local taxpayers and his work.

“Our job in the assessor’s office is to spread the tax burden out, fairly and equitably across all the properties in the county,” Coons said.

In order to assess every property in the county, assessors are moving to mass appraisals, a method that Coons said his office is already implementing.

“Before this, were we doing single property appraisals?” Coons asked. “No. Never.”

Mass appraisals are defined as the “systematic appraisal of groups of properties as of a given date using standardized means and statistical testing.” A single property appraisal is the “valuation of a particular property as of a given date.”

“We group properties together,” Coons said. “This is part of the challenge for my office. Are those groups too big? Too small? Do they fit together right or not?”

The legislature only requires the assessor to visit a property once every six years.

“At least every six years,” Coons pointed out. “In this county we’re going to stick with every four years because it is hard to teach an old dog new tricks.”

“People would find that their evaluation would stay the same if they didn’t build something on their property for four years,” Coons said. “Then the value would jump with the next evaluation. People were freaking out when they saw their property values triple.”

The legislature decided to switch to mass appraisals every year in order to follow the market in and avoid shocking scenarios like the one Coons described.

He used another example.

“The town was assessed at the top of the market,” Coons said. “They were carrying a huge burden for four years while everyone else’s values went away. Then all of the sudden, the town’s value went down. The tax burden didn’t go away, it went to everyone else.”

The new system will allow the tax burden to be adjusted for everyone at one time and thus make it more equitable, according to Coons.

“So much of what I do is subjective,” Coons said. “I want to be accurate and fair. If I’m inaccurate, I want to be consistently inaccurate so it’s fair.”

An assessor’s accuracy is measured by a ratio study, which divides the appraised value by the sales price, when a property is sold. If the results are under 100 percent, the property was under assessed. If it’s over 100 percent, the property was over assessed. The more properties sold, the easier it is to assess his work, the easier it is for Coons to make adjustments.

“I don’t want properties to be over assessed,” Coons said. “And if all of the properties are consistently under assessed the state comes in and says ‘You’re giving everybody a break in Wahkiakum County, which is fine for your little local stuff, but we need our state tax money to be fairly apportioned so we are going to equalize and raise your tax burden by a corresponding amount’.”

The assessor’s office uses a formula and software created by the Department of Revenue for the mass appraisals.

“It’s a very difficult program,” Coons admitted, “but it works well.”

The Wahkiakum County Board of Equalization has requested training on the program in order to better serve the assessor and anyone who wishes to appeal the assessed value of their property, but the Department of Revenue has yet to respond to their request.