||| FROM SAN JUAN COUNTY COMMUNICATIONS |||
The Assessor’s Office mailed the 2023 Change of Value Notices on October 27, 2023. If your appraised value did not change from the prior year, you will not receive a Change of Value Notice. Tax rates will be provided by February 2024.
2023 Highlights
- San Juan County’s total value increased from $12.5 billion in 2022 to $14.4 billion, including $146 million in new construction, which is $16 million more than last year and the highest new construction value in San Juan County history.
- The 2023 inspection cycle included 2,791 properties on the south end of San Juan Island and the south end of Lopez Island, with 849 additional inspections for new construction in the rest of the county.
The Assessor’s Office analyzed sales between January 1, 2022 and April 30, 2023 to reflect the real estate market as of January 1, 2023 in the assessments. Properties with new construction are valued for improvements made to the property up to July 31, 2023. Most areas showed an increase in value from the previous year.
‘Change of Value Notice’ is Not a Tax Bill
Tax bills are mailed in February based on the budgets submitted by the taxing districts (state, county, fire, library, etc.). Budgets are limited to a 1% increase plus an allowance for new construction in the district, which usually adds another 1%-2% to the total amount collectable. Because the cost of services increases every year, most taxing districts increase their budgets from the previous year, which increase taxes.
Assessed values are set at market value. As sale prices increase, so will assessed values. As sale prices decrease, so will assessed values. If the taxing district budgets remained constant from one year to the next, taxes would stay the same even if assessed values doubled. Taxes would stay the same even if assessed values dropped in half. The levy rate is adjusted down or up as assessed values go up or down (think of a seesaw) to satisfy the budget amounts.
If you have questions about your assessment, please email the Assessor’s Office at assessor@sanjuanco.com or call (360) 378-2172 between 10:00 AM and 4:00 PM Monday – Thursday. Disagreements with the assessment may be appealed to the Board of Equalization. Completed petition forms must be submitted to the Board of Equalization within 30 days of the date printed on the Change of Value Notice.
About the San Juan County Assessor’s Office
The San Juan County Assessor’s Office identifies and assigns a taxable value to all business and personal property within San Juan County so that taxes are paid equitably according to State law. Property taxes allow our community to benefit from services like schools, libraries, parks, health services, fire protection, and law enforcement. The San Juan County Assessor’s Office is committed to a process that is professional, fair, and clearly understood. The department’s main office is located at 350 Court Street, Friday Harbor, WA 98250. For more information about San Juan County’s Assessor’s Office, visit www.sanjuanco.com/149/Assessor.
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Most tax parcels in San Juan County are statistically mass adjusted five out of every six years using statistical methods. The basis for the analysis is (1) the neighborhood your parcel(s) are in and (2) the subdivision of that neighborhood, which can be decades old developer plats … there are some 1,166 subdivisions in San Juan County. Mass adjustments valuations are made for both improvements (structures) and land. Mass adjustments are theoretically intended to keep values relatively the same, but last year, there were both occasions where a neighborhood multiplier and a subdivision multiplier changed side by side equally valued properties by hundreds of thousands of dollars .NONE of this is disclosed to taxpayers on the Assessor’s Change of Value Notice or on the parcel’s pull down screens available to the public on the assessor’s website.
In my opinion, it’s a stunning failure of the Department of Revenue not to have a requirement to show the neighborhood and subdivision valuation charges on the annual Change of Value Notice. In my specific case last year. those two changed valuation by more than $320,000, and it took months and multiple visits to the assessor’s office to get an explanation of how this works and a copy of the Mass Adjustment neighborhood and subdivision calculations.
Again, the transparency failure here is not the San Juan County Assessor, it’s the State Department of Revenue’s guidance to County Assessors.