Seattle's Biggest Office Buildings Lost Half Their Assessed Value in Three Years

Between tax years 2019 and 2026, the ten largest major office parcels in Seattle collectively shed roughly $3 billion in appraised assessed value. Columbia Center, the city’s tallest building, peaked at $857M in TY2019 and fell to $377M by TY2026—a 56% decline. Two Union Square dropped from $780M to $367M. 1201 Third Ave went from $700M to $324M. These aren’t marginal adjustments. The King County Assessor is telling us these buildings are worth about half what they were five years ago.

A synchronized decline

What’s striking is how synchronized the decline is. Almost every legacy tower—Columbia Center, Two Union Square, 1201 Third Ave, 1420 Fifth Ave—peaked between TY2018 and TY2020, then fell in lockstep. This isn’t a building-specific story. It’s a market-wide repricing of downtown Seattle office space, driven by rising vacancies and remote work reshaping tenant demand.

The Amazon buildings (Doppler and Re-Invent) and the newer towers (505 Madison, 1201 Second Ave, 333 Dexter) show a compressed version of the same arc: rapid ramp-up during construction, a brief plateau at stabilized value, then the same sharp post-2022 decline as the rest of the market. Amazon Doppler, for instance, reached $697M in TY2020—just four years after construction—and has since fallen to $254M.

The Expedia outlier

The Expedia Campus is the one partial exception. Its AV was remarkably flat from 2007 through 2017, hovering around $200M, then jumped to $391M after Expedia relocated to the Interbay waterfront campus in 2019–2020. Even it has been sliding since, but at $285M in TY2026, it’s still above its pre-Expedia levels—which is more than the legacy towers can say relative to their own histories. The campus is also unique in that its value is heavily land-driven: the 29-acre Elliott Bay waterfront site carries $285M in land value alone, with improvements assessed at essentially zero.

What this means for the tax base

These ten parcels represent roughly $2.8B in combined TY2026 appraised AV. At the $9.91 per $1,000 levy rate (levy code 0011), that’s approximately $28M in annual property tax revenue—meaningful exposure for the city’s general fund, King County, and the local school districts that share in the levy distribution. The continued compression in these values is worth watching for anyone tracking Seattle’s revenue outlook.

Explore the data

The interactive chart below lets you toggle individual buildings on and off. Try isolating just the legacy towers (built before 2000) versus the post-2015 construction—the patterns are remarkably parallel, just on different timelines.

Source: King County Assessor eReal records. Classification: KC Assessor spec_area 280 (Major Office). All values are appraised total AV (land + improvements), rounded to nearest million. Parcel numbers: Columbia Center (094200-0640), Two Union Square (197670-0125), 1201 Third Ave (197470-0120), Expedia Campus (766620-1725), Amazon Doppler (066000-0220), Amazon Re-Invent (066000-0270), 1420 Fifth Ave (197570-0080), 505 Madison St (094200-0415), 1201 Second Ave (197470-0175), 333 Dexter Ave N (199120-0870).