Many properties saw increases of up to 10%

It’s a new year and that means the new BC Assessments are out, indicating what the provincial government thinks your property is worth for property tax purposes. It’s important to note two things right off the bat: these numbers are not indicative of market value, and these numbers are based off the government’s calculations as at July 1, 2020. If you want to know the actual market value of your property, send us a message and we’ll be happy to help show you the market comparables that best determine the real value.

An assessment is very different from an appraisal - a property appraisal is most commonly done when a buyer is purchasing a property, and the bank/lender wants to know the actual market value of the property, so that they can determine how much they’re willing to lend the buyer. They will look at the size, age, condition, and area of the property and compare it to similar properties that have sold in the area. Since the BC government can’t do that with every property (just for fun, it would cost about $600,000,000 at $300 per appraisal for 2,000,000 properties, and would take years to complete), they apply a broad approach that they feel gets them close enough for tax purposes. Results vary substantially, with some properties actually being worth close to the assessment, and others selling for hundreds of thousands above or below those values.

Here’s what BC Assessment says their process looks like:

1. Information collection
Information is collected and analyzed by BC Assessment appraisers for all properties in British Columbia. (Most often this information collection occurs when properties are created/constructed, but can also occur at other times like when properties are renovated.)

2. Information analysis
Property sales are analyzed by BC Assessment appraisers to understand the property market as at July 1st of each year. This new market information is used to set the new assessments.

3. Create and deliver assessment notices

Assessment notices are created and then mailed to all property owners on December 31 each year.

2020 was a strong year, and assessments mostly increased with some owners seeing 10%+ gains, which were mainly for single family homes. Squamish and Port Coquitlam were two of the biggest earners at 10% and 8%, respectively.

Regardless of how meaningful an assessment is, it’s still interesting to see, and homeowners flock to https://www.bcassessment.ca/ to see what the government thinks of their property. I did this for myself right away, as did thousands of others of BC’s homeowners.

If you want to find out what your property is actually worth in the current market, send us a message any time and we can go over some comparables with you, even if you’re just curious.