Recently I attended an auction at a chicken farm and purchased a used one-room add-on to a house trailer. The other bidder standing next to me was the Snohomish County assessor. I purchased the room for $700. It was moved to a recently purchased $6,000 lot. The seller had been asking a price more consistent with the tax assessment for many years. However, the property is so wet you have to walk on two downed trees to get across the lot. I had rock dumped on the edge to build a platform for the 12 by 14 foot building.
My access is two tire tracks in the dirt. It has no water service, no toilet, but I did pay to have electricity brought in. The building is like a yard barn sitting on the ground with no foundation. It has chipboard inside and out.
I just received an assessment for the building at $5,600 and $16,500 for the lot, which will go up to $22,000 next year. The county appeal process I applied for will take more than 12 months.
I am happy to have my little isolated spot in the woods with no traffic, to read, paint, listen to music and walk in the surrounding woods. I do not think it is reasonable for the same assessor who bid against me to now assess it at more than the cost of building a new structure.
This shows our county is assessing our property at county budget needs, not value. Perhaps this is part of the reason there were five pages of county tax delinquency sales in the paper recently. Also, every day I read the many creditor sales on the courthouse steps. How many are because the owner can’t sell the property to make up the difference on what they owe due to the inflated value set by the county in relation to the market value, such as in my case? Anyone wanting to pay me $22,100 please call or wait until next year when it raises to $27,600.
Perhaps you wonder why I’m not happy to know my little one-room cabin, sitting on 20 feet of usable ground appreciated $20,000 in one year. I would be if I didn’t understand this represents my portion of the budget, not reality.
Three cheers for Tim Eyman, why are the rest of us so complacent?
Everett
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