Tax values irk owners — again

The phones have been going crazy — again — because of those 2008 King County property assessments. Readers who aren't angry about their assessed values going up are completely confused about how their land values could have risen while their home values fell.

I've addressed the question about higher property values in my blog, and I will share what I learned in 2005, when my assessment showed a higher value for land and lower value for the house.

I turned to an expert — residential real-estate reporter Elizabeth Rhodes, who turned my confusion into a question for her Home Forum column.

Here's the answer we published:

While the assessed value is supposed to mirror the market value, they're not the same thing, said Stan Roe, who's with the King County Assessor's Office.

"The market sells it as one piece," Roe said. "They don't look at it separately as land and house. But by law, we have to split it out."

Indeed, state law says, the assessor must value the land as if it were vacant. After the land value is determined, the assessor determines the total value of the property. Then the land's worth is subtracted from the total and the remainder becomes the value of the building.

"If land costs are going up, something has to give on the other end," Roe said, "because we can't adjust the total. It has to equal 100 percent of the market. That's why you see a lot of properties on Lake Washington that may only have $1,000 value on the house because the real value is in the land.

Is valuing properties this way a bad deal for homeowners? Not really because it doesn't control market value, and it may even help keep taxes down. For more on valuation, visit the King County property assessor's Web site, www.metrokc.gov/assessor/.

If that answer doesn't help, you can ask King County Tax Advisor Barbara Alsheikh, who will be at The Seattle Times at noon Sept. 4 for a live online question-and-answer session.

Zillow report details

quarterly home sales

Zillow's latest report — on second-quarter home sales — breaks down the market by price range, type of home (house vs. condo), MSA (metropolitan statistical area), county, city, ZIP code and neighborhood and also looks at homeowners' equity, market trends (where we are in comparison with the peak) and distress signals.

News services often report national numbers, but because real-estate markets are local and the overall U.S. market is dragged down by California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona, we get a more accurate picture of the Seattle-area market from detailed local numbers.

Here's a look at a few interesting tidbits from the data:

• Year-over-year value change ranges 14.4 percent higher (Medina) to 14.5 percent lower (Duvall).

• The Bridle Trails neighborhood in Kirkland saw its five-year annualized value change by 12.1 percent.

• Marketwide, 73.8 percent of homes lost value in the past quarter; 86.3 percent in the past 12 months.

Check out the detailed report at www.zillow.com/reports/RealEstateMarketReports.htm. Look for the list of cities on the left side, scroll down to Seattle, and click on the Excel spreadsheet logo (the fat green X) for details.

This material has been edited for print publication.

Excerpts from Cindy Zetts' blog appear Sundays in Real Estate. Reach her at 206-464-2027 or czetts@seattletimes.com.