BC Assessment
2012 Property Assessments sent out this week
Jan 5th
Welcome to my blog for 2012! Of course I had to speak to our good friend Reuben Danakody of BC Assessment to see how the past year shaped up from the perspective of property values here in the Capital Region. Quite interesting to see what happened on average to values. The key question to remember is, do you think your Assessment is a good indication of what your property would have sold for in July of 2011? If you think it’s way higher or lower than the value you saw, you may want to appeal and we speak about how that is done as well.
Call me if you would like any help in navigating or understanding the process or if you simply want to see how your property value compares to the rest of the market.
Fergus Kyne RE/MAX Alliance Victoria, BC 250 216 1217
Assessment appeal deadline in Jan 31!
Jan 27th
IF you are still thinking about appealing your 2011 BC Assessment Authority assessment, time is running out! You have until Jan 31, 2011 to submit your appeal. In this video, Ruben Danakody and Fergus Kyne discuss what you should consider as you make your decision. As well, we discuss what will be expected of you if you find yourself in front of an appeal panel.
We want to make sure that people understand that the staff at BC Assessment are available to help you with this process every step of the way. Call me, your Realtor in Victoria, Fergus Kyne if you have any questions.
Should you be looking for a competent, active and connected real estate agent to help you with your buying and selling of real estate, I am available for interviews. Phone or text me 250 216 1217 or email me at your convenience, fergus@telus.net
All the best!
Assessments went up, will my taxes?
Jan 5th
So in this video with Rueben Danakody, Assessor, Capital Region, we speak about the BC Assessment notices you received this week, about your upcoming tax notices from your municipality, which is a few months off, as well as how you can access the website of www.bcassessment.ca to review other comparable properties.
In another upcoming video we will show you how to navigate (pretty easy) that actual site and how you can use it year round to help you to guage the market value of your home.
I’n your realtor in Victoria, Fergus Kyne with ViewTheHome.ca, you can follow me on Twitter at ViewTheHome and and Facebook with the same name.
Call me anytime: 250 216 1217
Fergus Kyne
Re/Max Alliance
770B Hillside Ave
Victoria, BC
250 386-8875
Your BC Property Assessment notice is coming…”Yeah, so?”
Dec 16th
Every year in the first week of January, you will receive in the mail, if you are a homeowner, a letter from BC Assessment detailing the assessed value of your property and its improvments. Often people wonder what this document is intended to be and we start to get a lot of calls from our clients asking for some clarification, most often because homeowners will think, “Hey, it this the value of my home if I was to sell it?” and the easiest answer for us as professional full service realtors is to say, “Maybe…”.
And really, isn’t that the type of confidence inspiring advice you’re so desperately seeking from your real estate consultant?
We say this because this value that you see is more of a snap shot. Keep in mind the assessed value, answers this basic question, “Do you agree that this would have been a reasonable price for your home to sell for in July of the previous year?” In the case of the notice you will receive in January 2011, this means July 1st, 2010. So despite the fact that the market appeared to soften at times in 2010, most people will see a 5-10% increase in the value of their assessments.
This doesn’t mean that your property would sell for the amount you see on the notice. Keep in mind that in the third and fourth quarters of 2010, sales declined and real home prices fell, in some cases, quite noticeably. Remember that the first six months of 2010 were still quite hot for sales and prices remained high. Remember as well that real estate is a commodity; like gold, potash or stock in RIM, it goes up and down, often…and not always when you want or need it to.
Again, it’s a figure that the assessment authority uses to determine simply the approximate value of your property; in other words this number is used as a factor, or multiple for you math people. So if your property is worth in the view of BC Assessment, say $500 000, then this number is used to multiply by all the various percentages that your municipality has decided will be used to determine how much property tax you will pay for city taxes that go to pay for schools, roads, sewer, police and fire services and on and on.
That notice from your municipality will arrive sometime around April and in great detail, explains the exact dollar amount you will pay for some of the services described above. Or more accurately, the amount that your property is responsible to pay. Now I say that because depending on the age of the homeowners on title, and whether or not this is a your principal residence, recreation or otherwise, the amount of actual tax owed will vary.
In this video I was able to speak to BC Assessor for the Capital Region, Reuben Danakody. He was gracious enough to answer all kinds of questions I had regarding the process. You can reach him at 250 479 7131.
The first thing you should know is that they are here to help. Beginning in Jaunuary, live people (!) will be available to speak to you on the phone and their website www.bcassessment.ca is an excellent place to start to investigate how the assessors came up with a value for your home. Call me if you want some help understanding the whole process.
I’ll be in conversation with Rueben Danakody several times and you’ll be able to follow along and comment as well as leave me questions to ask of him. We’ll be asking him how the property values are determined, how the process works for appealing and what in general happened to property values in the Capital Region in 2010.
I look forward to your questions and comments.
Your Realtor in Victoria, BC.
Fergus Kyne
