http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/realestate/archives/147892.asp

So in the evening I might be drinking wine or grilling on the deck in my robe, which seems strange. In the morning, walking to pick up the P-I I can pretend I’m impersonating Tony Soprano, but there’s no excuse for it in the evening.

My brother used to live on a course in CA, and he warned me about the maintenance equipment in the early morning hours. So far in just under a year that’s only been a problem once, but I typically wake up early.

Finally, thanks for the question–it’s caused me to think about a few other things and will probably work into a piece on valuation in general over in P-I land.

I considered a house on the golf course when I lived in Florida, until 5 guys showed up a few feet from my lanai. I used to go out on the lanai in the morning in a bathrobe and green face mask to have my coffee and do some work. No way I wanted to be waving good morning boys in that getup.

Email sent. Now keep the envelope sealed

You should email me that price offline so we can track back after the sale and see how close to zero your standard deviation is….

That’s really a hard question to answer because of the differences in the houses–primarily whether or not they’ve been remodeled, and if so, how well. If you just look at the raw numbers it could be up to $100,000, but that is clearly excessive. I believe the highest price house sold in the past year was on the course, but it was also a much larger house than the average in the neighborhood.

Personally I view the golf course more as a feature that is more akin to larger lot size. It makes it somewhat more valuable, not not as much as what you’d think. But I’d also suspect that the answer may be different for different courses.

For us being on the course made us interested in the house because we were looking for some separation from neighbors and/or a view of woods. The golf course does that for us, but being a golf course itself had no real value to us, except . . .

Having a golf cart garage is great for real estate agents. Good place to put staging, signs, etc.

How do the “golf course view” houses of your neighborhood differ from those without golf course view?

I think you missed something in the post:

” I think the County has a really, really good reason for what just happened, and i think they are correct.”

I am not complaining at all. In fact they may have missed some of the view factors and it may continue to be under-assessed.

I know exactly what my house is worth, Gordon. It’s my job to know that. It’s not $764,000 or $$950,000

There was no question in my mind when I bought it for $850,000 that it was under-assessed. I was not surprised. The day I am surprised by anything in real estate after 18 plus years is the day I should think about hanging it up…LOL!

Maybe it’s just the methodology and size of the increase that you’re upset about.

I find it ironic when a homeowner says “my taxes are crazy! The assessment is up to $500,000!”
“Really, what’s your house worth?”
“Well, at least $800,000!”

A couple of other points, picked up from the King County website:

1. Even though not required, they now reassess every year. Given the way tax rates are determined, that’s actually better because you don’t get hit with an increase every X years that only 1/X of your neighbors get hit with.

2. The state constitution apparently requires assessment at 100% of value. That means a couple of things, including the fact that changing to a California type system would require a constitutional amendment. That said, it seemingly would also require them to take recent sales of property into account. I wonder how the assessor’s office justifies assessing property at 70% of a recent sale price?