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Property values in King County expected to drop in 2024

Residential property values in King County are expected to go down in 2024. The King County Assessor’s initial report suggests places like Queen Anne could see an 8% reduction, while places east of Lake Washington like Sammamish could see values decrease up to 22%.

“What it may well mean is dependent upon on how various tax measures play out. You could see a reduction in property taxes in 2024,” County Assessor John Wilson said.

The news of residential property values potentially going down is good for everyone according to Suzanne Fortune with Windermere Real Estate.

“Especially for people who have paid their house off in full. And maybe people that are retired,” Fortune said.

Fortune also believes that the less people pay in taxes, it will draw in more people from outside the county.

“And we find that a lot of people move out of the market because of their tax bills. So, I think having a decreased tax bill is going to help some people quite a bit,” Fortune said.

While this may be good news for all homeowners in King County, Wilson says factors like inflation and interest rates still can impact people buying or selling their homes.

“The tricky thing with residential right now is while values are coming down, interest rates are high,” Wilson said.

“But by the same token with interest rates high, buyers find that they can’t afford as much as they thought or they look at the lending cost of buying a particular house and going ‘Wow. That’s a lot of money,’” Wilson said.

Wilson says commercial real estate is seeing their property values drop by 15% to 20% as part of the impacts of more people working from home.

“The Columbia Tower, for example. It’s a good example of the biggest dang building on the skyline, but not necessarily filled to capacity or optimized to gain the most rent out of it,” Wilson said.

To learn more on property values and taxes, you can use the taxpayer transparency tool.