Pierce County property assessments are to be mailed Friday and some of the value changes mirror home sale trends. County reporter David Wickert and I met with Assessor Ken Madsen and his staff this afternoon and talked about how they generate the values and why some cities are beating others.

Countywide assessments for all residential properties are up 9.8 percent this year. The median home sale price for 2006 was up 12.7 percent, excluding condos, according to the Northwest Multiple Listing Service. (Beware, though, that assessments tend to trail current MLS-related stats because the numbers used in 2007 are gathered in 2006. Also, county numbers take into account nearly all residential properties, including vacant land. The MLS deals with home sales.)

A few of the cities topping the average assessment increase: Fife, one of the few cities where sales activity continues to beat last year’s, and Eatonville, in one of the MLS areas that was among last month’s biggest price-appreciation winners -- 24 percent to $279,000.

Look for more in-depth analysis on more than two dozen cities in this Sunday’s News Tribune.

After writing about lawyers getting rated at a new Seattle-based Web site, I found Homethinking – a site that lets you give one to five stars to your real estate agent. (You can, of course, also shop for a house.)

Stars are given in numerous categories, including neighborhood knowledge, understanding of a property’s weaknesses and ability to answer a seller’s questions. And you can add your verbatim opinion, such as this one for a one-star agent in Franklin, Mass.: “Said negative things about other agents. His Bad!!”

One immediate concern: You can post anonymously, which seems unfair when it comes to slamming anyone, particularly someone trying to run a business.

What do you think? I couldn’t find any Tacoma agents rated, so you could be the first …