When I'm providing mortgage rate quotes for Seattle area home owners, I've been noticing that many of them are enjoying recently reduced property taxes due to the current housing climate.  So you can imagine my surprise to see that our tax assessed value (and therefore our tax bill) INCREASE for 2010.   Our neighbor confirmed that her taxes went up as well.   Neither of us have made any improvements to our homes.   So this is apparently based on "appreciation".   But without significant sales to support this increase, I'm wondering where King County is coming up with these numbers?

Local title company, The Talon Group, has an interesting article about property taxes

Homeowners have a right to appeal their property valuations withing 60 days of the mail date of the Official Property Value Notice. It would stand to reason that they would need to send some sort of notification out to homeowner if the assessor was revaluing property.

I'm wondering what other Beach Drive neighbors received from the King County tax assessor.  Please chime in–did your assessment go up or down or stay the same?