The Real Number: Taxes Are Up 10%, Not 5.4%

They did it again. King County property values rose 5.4% across the entire county in the 2025-to-2026 cycle. Obviously some areas saw more appreciation and some saw less. That didn't stop property taxes from increasing 10% for the 2026 tax year. If your first instinct is to assume your tax bill just tracked your home's rising value, I want to stop you right there, because that's not actually what happened.

Figures per the King County Assessor's official 2026 Property Taxes page. Your specific bill depends on your city, school district, and any local levies in your area; always check your own parcel through the Assessor's eReal Property search rather than relying on countywide averages.

Here's the correction worth sitting with. King County's own assessor's office states plainly: "For the most part these voter-approved measures, and not increasing property values, are responsible for increases in property taxes." That's a meaningful distinction. A 5.4% rise in your home's assessed value doesn't automatically translate into a 10% tax increase. What actually happened is that voters across the county approved a stack of new and renewed levies, lid lifts, and bonds in 2026, and those measures are doing most of the heavy lifting on that bigger number.

Where the Money Actually Goes

To see exactly where your tax dollars go, King County publishes a full breakdown at its 2026 Property Taxes overview page. About 20% funds county-level services like roads, criminal justice, and public health, according to the county. The rest is distributed across cities, school districts, fire districts, and other taxing districts, based on where your specific property sits.

How This Actually Hits Your Monthly Mortgage Payment

If you escrow your property taxes through your mortgage, and most homeowners with a conventional or government-backed loan do, a countywide tax increase doesn't show up as a separate bill you write a check for. It shows up as a change to your monthly mortgage payment itself, even though your loan's principal and interest haven't moved at all.

King County Property Tax Increase 2026

Here's a sample of what voters actually approved for the 2026 tax year, per the King County Assessor, to make this less abstract. Bothell voters renewed a 10-year Safe Streets and Sidewalks lid lift. Seattle voters renewed a levy funding families, education, and preschool programs, plus a separate levy supporting the Democracy Voucher election program. Several fire districts, including a new Northshore-area regional fire authority, passed their own measures. Multiple school districts passed replacement capital and operations levies. Each of these is a specific, named decision voters made, not an abstract "taxes went up" event or budget shortfall decision.

I want to be careful here and stick to what's actually documented rather than editorializing about any specific measure. These are the facts as published by the county, and I'd encourage you to look up your specific parcel through the King County Assessor's 2026 overview page to see exactly which levies apply to your property.

Will Voters Start Saying No?

This is genuinely the interesting part to watch over the next few election cycles. Property tax measures in King County have passed at a fairly steady clip for years, largely because most voters believe in what they're funding: schools, fire protection, parks, and infrastructure. But there's a real tension building between two things that are both true at once. Rising home values are good for homeowners on paper. Rising tax bills that outpace those value gains are not good for anyone's monthly budget, especially for homeowners on fixed incomes or those already stretched thin by their mortgage payment.

I don't have a prediction here so much as a question worth sitting with. If tax increases keep running ahead of value increases the way they did this year, at some point that math starts to matter at the ballot box. Whether that shows up as more no votes on future levies, or just more scrutiny of what's actually being funded, is something worth watching closely if you own property here.

If you want a broader sense of how property taxes factor into the investment case for owning in this area, I've written more generally about that in Is Bothell a Good Place to Invest in Real Estate?, and for a look at how school funding levies specifically connect to home values in this area, see Northshore School District: Why It's the #1 Driver for Bothell and Kenmore Home Values. You can also catch up on recent local appreciation trends in the Bothell, WA Housing Market Report.