| Residential
Property Assessments Department of Assessments Report No. 2002-01 Ron Perry, Principal Management Auditor
This performance audit of residential property assessments by the County Assessor’s Office (Department of Assessments) arose out of council concerns over whether residential assessments were representative of market values and developed in a manner consistent with industry or professional standards. There was also concern over the timeliness with which adjusted values ordered by the county Board of Appeals and Equalization (BAE or the Board) were implemented. This audit reviewed and evaluated the process used by the Assessor’s Office to conduct appraisals of residential properties in the county and compared that to recognized professional practices and standards for public assessments. The audit sought to determine whether the county department met industry standards and whether the assessed values of residential assessments are reflective of true and fair market values. The audit also reviewed the implementation of adjustments approved by the Board of Appeals and Equalization to determine whether adjustments of assessed values occurred in a timely manner.
Compliance with laws and professional standards We found that the Department of Assessments, headed by the County Assessor, performs residential appraisals in a manner which conforms to professional standards for mass appraisals. Based on key indicators of performance, King County meets those standards, and when compared to other counties in Washington State, meets or exceeds the statewide average for those statistical measures. Access to public information on assessments The Assessor’s Office provides information about the property assessment process through its public information office and its internet site. Complete information about individual properties is available only through the information office, and to a lesser extent, six county community service centers. Assessment data on the department’s web site is limited to summarized statistics and excerpts from 88 area (neighborhood) reports. The latter show on a summary basis how assessed values in a neighborhood compare to recent sales in that area, but much of the information is not written for a lay reader such as a taxpayer. Taxpayers seeking detailed information about individual property parcels have limited access options. They may go to the department’s public information office or a community center to query databases and examine maps, area reports, etc. Access to information via the internet is confusing. As noted above, the department’s web site offers primarily summarized information. It does not provide a link to two other county departmental web sites which have more detailed information about parcels characteristics, assessed values, and taxes. The Finance and Business Operations Division’s web site enables one to look up current and previous years’ tax information, but only if the parcel number is known. The Department of Development and Environmental Services (DDES) provides user-friendly access to parcel and assessment information (updated periodically by the Assessor). Ironically only one of these sites provides a link to another, and users will have difficulty in finding the information they might need. Also, information about current posted values and taxes for a subsequent year is not available on any site, even after the revaluation and tax notices for next year have been mailed to property owners. While we suggest that more information be available on the web sites, we do not recommend that it be unlimited. For example, we do not see the need to include the names of property owners, due to concerns expressed by county agencies regarding the potential for abuse of such information. We recommend in this report that the information on the Assessor’s Office web site be made more readable to the lay reader and that more specific information be made available. We further recommend that the information about property, assessed values, and taxes contained on county agency web sites be better coordinated and easier for the public to access. Implementation of appeal orders Regarding the implementation of appeals ordered by the Board of Appeals and Equalization, we found that the Assessor’s Office properly implements the adjusted values, but that the recording of the new values may be duplicative and slow, resulting, in some cases, in the delay of property tax refunds. A recommendation is made for the Assessor’s Office to streamline this process. We further found that it took several weeks for the Finance and Business Operations Division (Finance Division) to process tax refunds. We recommend that the division reduce the processing time and establish a performance target for that process.
SUMMARY OF FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS The county is charged under law to assess real property at true and fair value, which equates to market price/value. Each year 85 full-time equivalent staff make assessments of over 460,000 parcels of residential properties, using an approach called “mass appraisal.” This technique uses a combination of statistical calculations and physical characteristics of the property to determine the new assessment values each year. The mass appraisal process is governed by standards developed by the International Association of Assessing Officers. The audit team employed those standards to assess the performance of how well the County Assessor’s Office develops assessment values that are both equitable and uniform. The assessments produced by the County Assessor’s Office meet legal requirements and industry standards. The audit team verified the accuracy of the performance data published by the Assessor’s Office and used to measure the overall quality and performance of its methods and statistical models. As noted above, assessments are required by law to reflect true and fair value. The principal way to measure this is the comparison of assessed value to sale price, expressed as a ratio. The ideal assessed value ratio is 1.0. Also, the International Association of Assessing Officers develops standards to evaluate and ensure the performance and quality of mass appraisal assessments. The residential assessments produced annually by the King County Assessor’s Office meet the statutory requirements and all of the applicable standards. (Finding 2-1) There are several ways for county taxpayers to access information about residential property assessments, but only one of them provides complete information. Namely, the Department of Assessment’s Public Information Office on the 7th floor of the County Administration Building provides hard copy and computer records on all aspects of a property. To a lesser degree, taxpayers can access assessment data at county community service centers, on the department’s web site, and on the web sites of two other county agencies. Internet versions of reports about assessments by neighborhood (called “area reports”) are not written for the lay reader and omit key data such as recent sales data (with addresses). (Finding 3‑1) We recommend including sales data in the report summaries and making them more readable for the general public. (Recommendation 3-1) The web sites of three county agencies provide different pieces of information about assessments, taxes, and property parcels available to the public. However, there is no overall coordination and linking of the sites, and some of the information is not current. (Finding 3-2) We recommend that the data provided be more timely and that agencies improve the coordination and content of their sites. (Recommendation 3-2) Taxpayers who believe that their residential property valuation is inaccurate may file an appeal petition to the county Board of Appeals and Equalization. Pursuant to council concerns, the audit team reviewed how assessed valuation appeals are implemented, if it is determined that some form of adjustment to the value originally established by the Assessor’s Office is appropriate. We followed a sample of appeals through the appeals process and examined how adjustments by the Board or the Department of Assessments are implemented. We found that the Assessor’s Office properly implements Board orders (Finding 4-1), but that the recording/entry of the adjusted values into databases was duplicative and slow (Finding 4-2). In our sample, about half of the cases took over 30 calendar days to record the Board’s changes to assessed values in Assessor’s system. This can cause further delay in the processing and delivery of tax refunds. We recommend that Board-ordered adjusted values be entered into the Department of Assessment’s database records on a more timely basis, particularly when it pertains to a tax refund. We further found that the processing of tax refunds by the Finance Division often took several weeks. (Finding 4-3) It took more than 40 calendar days for the Finance Division to process 75 percent of the tax refund applications in our sample for year 2000. We recommend the division establish a performance measure to reduce the turnaround time for tax refunds. The Department of Assessments and the County Executive concur with the recommendations in the audit. Their responses are included in Appendices 2 and 3. |
Updated: 12/10/02
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