today's guest is a public official who is trying to make it easier for you to say he did a bad job lloyd here are the king county assessor right here today on public exposure lloyd welcome to the show thank you stance pleasure to be here with you so you know we're very fortunate  back because we've had you on in several different capacities but i mean am i right are you trying to make it easier for the public to say hey you made a mistake we that's what we want to do we ought to increase our transparency and accountability to the public and by coming out with various programs on our website but also we've just introduced a brand new we call appeals where the homeowner can go and take a look at their property the value that's on it look around to their neighborhood and see whether or not it's fairly appraised and we're going to go over the appeals and real specifics because i think that's a that's really kind of neat but i wanted to know just a little bit more about the general aspects of the assessor's office and a little bit about the history that has taken you for a long time career public service and to the assessor's office itself well that's true just previously being elected two  or seattle port commission or so and we had a number of programs in dealing with the port of seattle at that time but moving forward here to becoming the assessor one of the first things i did was to take a look and brought the whole office around two hundred employees together to take a look at our mission vision and guiding principles and there are three things that really came out of this number one we wanted to make sure that we served our public with excellent public service and to be the best assessor's office that we can possibly be number two to improve our transparency and accountability to the general public and or see and third uniformly fairly and equitably value all property and you may ask why is that important while it's so important because i want no one to pay any more tax or a less tax than required by law so what is the basic function of the assessor's office i mean who do you serve to serve the public to serve the government who well are first and foremost we serve the public everyone in king county secondly we deal with the various tax districts in king county we have one hundred sixty three tax districts that would be like the city of seattle the seattle school board king county government port of seattle various hospital districts fire districts e for and they owe is so we serve them too because based on our value and the budgets they will generate the amount of income that they will get from the property well and right now being an official in a governmental entity like that that they're looking for every nickel that they can get because the economics have been so tough and so are they putting saying to you you know we want to make sure that this property is valued more than what the homeowner may think you know what we do like i said like i'm in residential properties we look at sales and sales so are in the market so we take on average two or three years and run them through a computerized program to come up with a median average value for the property and so what we look at is we have eighty five caliber areas within king county in your neighborhood say for example you live in west seattle we will look at all those properties in west seattle and put them in the mix to come up with an average median income or value for that particular home or homes in that area and we continue to do that through oh so that that's our goal is make sure that everything is equitable and fair to your particular location and by neighborhood so one of the skills then that people inside the assessor's office what would they have just in general ok first and for foremost  one we want to instruct them and provide the skill set for them to be good appraisers when they go out to a neighborhood and they can look at the condition of the particular home you know what it was built in the grade we do grade it we also take a look at the other characteristics they are absolutely correct the square footage of the lot the square footage of the structure doesn't have  we want to make sure all those data points are accurate and then we'll bring them back and we do have tested models that run it basically into the computer we also won six of the properties each year and we appraise seven hundred thousand parcels in king county so we seven hundred thousand seven hundred thousand we are you right and we are have physical inspections of around one hundred forty thousand per year so we not only like i say look at the basic characteristics and run a computerized model but we also physically go and examine any changes of conditions so for example say a person says oh we have you on your property and say you live in seattle right now we have an ordinance where you can't cut down trees you've lost your view and so we said ok fine we'll send her appraisers you know validate that it's in fact the case and we've had cases cleared and when people have called us we've gone out the tree line here yeah yeah out there that was pretty famous so what what is how valuable is a tree two piece of property a residential property well is that a tough question or it's you know we we know that view is important because we see that you go across the street to his neighbors say for example in the as a view unobstruct then you can get some sense of value would someone is willing to pay with that struck to do compared to maybe in this case mr or roads factor that he lost that view on the other hand we all know that trees in itself have value and add and so it's kind of a trade off between the located and where the trees located relative to the overall price w probably not you know they basically would probably have independent in this case and in appraisers it came to justify mr oh it was position in the neighbors position what happens if the house  so let's say that at the the assessment on the property plus the improvement the house is three hundred thousand dollars and then it sells for two hundred fifty thousand dollars does that do you automatically get notice of how much a piece of property sells for we do we track every sale within the county and this is done when a person comes in and does the transfer title and then is done with the king county recorder's office in king county we will get a notice from them that this property is sold for x dollars and we will put that in our database to one of the things that the public should be aware of is that we run at least twelve months plus on our value day versus the current one is zero for example your two thousand and thirteen t is january first two thousand and twelve so we look at sales for two thousand and twelve eleven and and ten in this particular case going back and looking at those  why so you know it's interesting during the period when the downturn was occurring we would have people who would come in and say please please increase the value of our home because when negotiating with the bank and more interest rates are extremely low even though we've seen a kick up they wanted to make sure that they had value to loan you know was greater and so they wanted to take advantage of the new interest rates so you were getting pushed and pulled in all sorts of directions that one homeowner wants to pay less taxes another one wants a higher appraisal so i can get more money from the up by ten percent my taxes on a magic go up ten percent no that is not the case because there are circuit breakers that are built in and so you know your value maybe value ten percent higher maybe your tax only want up one point eight percent you know and the funny thing about it is you talk to people they say oh you value my property at ten percent brainer but my tax one openly want one point eight you must a messed up no because the way our state works the levee readjust every year in many many states lead the is fixed and so are called basically a revenue base state and there is also some limitations on that that aid remember i mentioned about the tax in this jurisdictions we have a hundred sixty three and just he thinking county alone right and each one of those taxing districts can only increase its revenue by one percent so that means say for example the seattle city got one hundred dollars the next year there could only receive one hundred one dollars in total and so as a consequence there is a limitation overall as to how much tax can be collected by the city of seattle and this would apply then to all the other tax districts within your jurisdiction so are we realistically paying less in taxes from a real estate standpoint than what we should know basically your were at the point where we make sure that we're following state law and it's very important that we do that that everybody in the county than one percent what we have something called special levy it's and how often do we vote special levees every february for sure quite a bit that's probably when the school bad that is are out wrecked and then this last year if you live in cities seattle for example you had the king county levy for a new youth justice center and then we had the we had the librarian levy so a lot of this is voter approved seattle it's a little over twenty percent voter approved levies now you may live out further in king county and your special levies voter approved could be up to fifty percent or more of your property that is really oh yeah oh i'll we're in a very short break we're very fortunate have lloyd harris who is the king county assessor he's talking with us today about so many different aspects of what his office goes through in assessing the valuation of a home and it's really very interesting with the opportunities that you of the public have so we've got the web site up on the screen we're going to be talking about the appeals you talked about at the beginning of the show and that and it's cool because if i i don't even have to go and spend a lot of money parking downtown i can do it right from my home computers at it well that's the filing of step three and more electronic use but let me go initially back to the appeals before we used to get tons of paper that the president or business and the file businesses we might get a stack you know that high in their appeal even for home or repro see them around to ensure paper that they'd have to mail in to make their appeal this way you can automatically go online take a look at your property do a comparison between your property and their properties and determine it's a ome while cheap my neighbors are appraised approximately what i am or should i continue if you think you then oh yeah i think i should get a little less value then maybe all moved to the next step next step is we have a tax calculator and so it says well gee i think my problem is worth twenty five thousand dollars less so if the board approves the full twenty five thousand there's no guarantee on that either to be substantially less than they could leave it then you say ok maybe my tax savings would be say a couple hundred dollars as you said as example then the next question is well where is my property tax go in king county fifty percent or more goes to support of the basic education k through twelve around seventeen percent supports my city another sixteen have supports king county government two percent goes to support the port of seattle and the other remaining balance and support of the programs and you may say well gee maybe there's one portion i don't like well you can't pick and choose that portion you want to thank you because you can appeal your taxes you only can appeal your value say well and we talked before about some things that go into a homeowner's value like view and trees and neighborhood and all that kind of things but you know that there is a there's a show on television called hoarders and where you see messy houses that are beyond belief does the messiness of a house on the outside or even on your neighbors as that have an impact on your evaluation it may annoy you so i can say it me determines what price or value that house or the hoarders house with sells for or houses that are close by and close proximity you guys see what the value is but what we do is remember i mentioned about the neighborhood we look at the neighborhood as a whole is what people are willing to pay say for example and w of the land use people and say hey you know i got a message for the same thing i do have a telephone number that was given for king county illegal dumping you can call two zero six two nine six seven four eight three and we'll be sure to get that up on the screen yeah we'll do that and then also in the city of seattle it's succeed for seventy five eighty five eighty seven so you know then it's the agency contact basically to resolve this kind of touchy issue now do business owners business property owners go through the same things at the same type of evaluation we do there's three methods to value one is by market sales the second is by cause third is by income for commercial properties we go by income as the primary source and it's at income for business pursue is that like with with strip malls because i've seen it when the economic downturn took place strip malls were already not doing particularly well and as amazon and other online retailers get more penetration into our consumer spending it seems that strip malls may even have less of a value is that accurate or are they coming back or are houses coming back well i think in general the whole economy  substantially there's a close clearly asian between value property and job and so you know the whole cycle the whole economic cycle has moved  up and quite quite frankly i would say in general most properties are increasing there are certain pockets or segments in the county that are still having a little more difficult time  recovery but you know for just we're just starting to begin to get the two thousand and thirteen valuation on as you know we're starting to see some fairly substantial increases  certain select areas and there are some that there are still suffering let's say that south east king county is coming back slower than say seattle say bellevue same properties on the waterfront so you have a home on lake watch and those are really coming back because it's a limited and then inventory versus a number of people that have the demand or have the cash to pay up and the r s were seeing some significant bidding wars how about the governmental entities or can we talk about the hundred sixty three taxing districts that then you have to deal with  there when they do planning or when they are reacting to the potential of boeing moving more and more of its work to the southern part of united states do those governmental entities call you in and say you know can you help us understand what's happening here i mean how how much do you help them i guess is what i'm asking well we have a very close relationship with all the attacks and destroys in essence when i first took office i visited off thirty available and i do in fact go and make presentations primarily to a number of their financial people saying this is kind of what's happening and there is close coordination between our office and their offices a prepare their budgets as i mentioned before is a revenue base they say to washington so they can you know try to get a handle as to what is happening to the valu ons recognizing the have certain circuit breakers and things that are for we have no trying to work with them you might have heard there were some tax limitations by certain special districts because they met ever met their maximum threshold as to how much they can collect and we've seen a little bit more that during this last year the good thing is  so what are some of the most unusual arguments for either reducing or increasing a valuation that you've seen over the years and you show well i guess i guess every my whole thing is i want to make sure that we properly and as closely meet the state law which says we should be at one hundred percent value on the  we have an organization called the international association assessing officers and they basically say if you're within the range of ninety percent to one hundred ten percent on values that you're doing a very good job and so you want to stay within that in king county we're running around ninety two and a half percent of the value and and i think a lot for a lot of people special and we're going in a declining market  think people felt that being quite fair when i first took office in two thousand and nine we had over fifteen thousand appeal oh and we're now down on this last year two thousand and twelve to less than five thousand so hopefully you know that our expectation is we're doing the right thing and and property owners are saying yeah what does your office have to do when an appeal when a property owner appeals what does your office have to do well our appeal is under under the new online system this will make it a little bit easier so in terms of communication instead of doing a phone call or writing a letter now we can just quickly e mail the information to them so that should save us money and also to provide the appellant with better information in a timely manner does the fact that we're a revenue based system is that a disadvantage to to you or to the public i don't think so i mean looking at property taxes look back a couple years ago we were twenty ninth out of fifty states and property taxes and they said well gee that's still too high well i said we don't even have an income tax in this state so you know by comparison specially those that have moved here from new york or new jersey or transit users you know they love it they said you know our taxes are relatively low  by comparison where they live before so you know it's kind of relative you know old timers you know that are you know second third fourth generation washingtonians you know they always say my taxes are too high in many keys we only have about thirty seconds left but i want to ask this i want to get to personal property do you do evaluations on personal property to yes we do we every april thirtieth every business have you know major arteries think yeah they have to report that but the business and so then not only do you have to know about real property property valuations but you have to be able to assess personal property to we do do that it's always interesting to web site it's up on the screen you're going to learn an awful lot more and remember if you have an appeal now you can follow it on line we'll see you next week right here on public exposure take