What a Calgary property assessment measures

Wisdom from The Desk

True or false · The number on your assessment notice is what your house would sell for today. False. The City of Calgary values each house as it would likely have sold on July 1 of the year before, from many sales at once, and it uses the result to divide the property tax bill.

The number reads a date that has already passed

Assessment notices go out at the beginning of January. The City's assessment page says they "reflect the market value of a property on July 1 the previous year and the condition of the property as of the following December 31." It calls that July 1 the valuation date.

So every notice carries two dates. The value is read in July, and the house is described as it was on December 31. A kitchen finished in November falls inside the December date, so it belongs on the notice that arrives in January, valued as though the finished house had sold the July before. A house listed the following spring is being described by a summer nearly a year behind it.

It is built from many sales at once

The City calls the method mass appraisal. For houses it works from sales, analysing sold properties in the neighbourhood that are very similar, "specifically looking at the three years of sales leading up to the July 1 valuation date." Assessors also factor in a property's age, location, living area, lot size, additions and renovations.

The page draws the consequence itself. Using multiple sales to estimate market value, it says, "means that owners can see a difference in their sale price and their assessed value." A gap between the two is the method working as described.

Its job is dividing a bill

"Assessment is simply a distribution mechanism," the page says. City Council sets the tax rate each year from the budget, and the assessment decides each owner's share of what the budget needs. The same page adds that an increase in an assessment "does not mean your taxes will automatically go up by the same amount."

A document built to split one bill across every property in a city is answering a question about the city. A seller is asking a question about one house in one month.

Where the number is useful anyway

It is dated, and one method runs down the whole street, so it shows how the City reads your house beside your neighbours'. The City asks owners to compare their property details with their neighbours' on myTax, and to contact Assessment where something on the file looks wrong.

As an opening figure in a conversation about price it carries a date that has already moved. We work from the recent sales for that, read at the month we are actually in.

Every community we cover has its own page with the homes for sale on it, listed on our index of Calgary neighbourhoods.

The notice is a July number that arrives in January.