High or low. Right or wrong. The first thing you want to remember is that if your assessment is genuinely off by $50k you’re not out of pocket a ton of money. Property tax rates in New West are roughly 0.4% so a $50k difference equates to $200 in taxes. We all like saving $200, so what are we looking for?
When and why does it make sense to appeal the assessment? You definitely want to take a close look if you’re increase is higher than the average. Unfortunately my home was in a huge growth sector in 2020 so my 2021 assessment was way above the average. The assessed value was accurate and sadly, that meant my taxes went up. This year, my increase was below average and that kept me away from thoughts of appealing my assessment.
Regardless of your increase, you might feel that your assessment missed the mark. The first thing I do is check on my neighbour’s assessments. I search up addresses that look like my home. I’m looking for big variations, and especially if it seems that the assessment hasn’t properly accounted for updates. This is where BC Assessment gets it wrong. They pull data from municipalities. The formula accounts for (and depreciates) the value of building permits associated with the address. No permits, means no data to increase their value for improvements. However, appraisers do look at MLS photos. They also call me at least once per year to verify property information when using one of my sales as part an appeal.
Read more: How I Interpret my BC Assessment NoticeSome of you have already reached out regarding your assessment and those that I’ve found to be inaccurate looked to be using a small sample-size (usually from within a condo building) to justify their price per square foot. Those sales were outliers in the overall market and inflated the assessment. These were situations where an appeal was probably worth pursuing. They were off by about $40k, or about $160 per year.