First allow me a personal comment. I came into this job ten years ago following eight years in the real estate business as both a sales associate and managing broker. I knew how to do a CMA for prospective sellers (and buyers) and I had a fairly good idea how the fee appraisers did their job. I knew nothing about mass appraisal as done in the assessor’s office. I was immediately impressed by the sophistication of mass appraisal and the standards established by the International Association of Assessing Officers (IAAO).
 Mass appraisal can be a complex process but let me try to simplify it for the purpose of universal understanding. I’d first like to make a comparison to CMA’s and fee appraisals. The CMAs and fee appraisals select sales of properties (usually three) similar to a property being evaluated and then make necessary adjustments to the sale prices in order to match the subject. In mass appraisal all valid sales within a neighborhood or other grouping of properties are used. I will try to explain in a simple way how this is done. There are two key ingredients mass appraisal:
- A database is built containing information (characteristics) important to value on each of 112,000+ properties in the county. We call the characteristics variables and work hard to ensure the accuracy of the data. Although we use others, those variables most important to value are lot size, and view quality, plus dwelling size, quality, style, condition and age. With the land and view classifications we use actual sales of vacant and improved parcels to develop base land rates and view quality adjustment factors. With the dwelling and other site improvements we use national cost and depreciation rates. These rates allow us to account for the relative differences of all properties in their individual characteristics.
- Step two is to annually adjust the result derived from step one to the actual market in Kitsap County. We do this by dividing the county into about eighty market neighborhoods, measuring the previous year’s sales against our current assessed value, and then make global adjustments (up or down) to all properties within each neighborhood. In this process the important variables mentioned in step one are also tested using the same measuring of sales to assessed value to make sure that the rates are working appropriately. It is important to understand the timing of our value determinations. The value for which this year’s taxes are based is our conclusion of value on January 1st last year. This means that the value used for taxes due on April 30th is actually a value from 16 months ago.
 In the interest of brevity I have not discussed the way in which we adjust unique properties using land influence factors and dwelling relative desirability factors. I have also not discussed the appeal process, where we actually do a mini fee appraisal to verify that our rates and adjustments are producing a reasonable result. And I have not discussed the mass appraisal of commercial properties, where we rely most on an income approach. I welcome further discussion on this from any and all readers.
Tagged with: jim avery • kitsap county assessor • kitsap county property taxes
