Are Home Assessments the Same Thing as Home Value?

Calgary Real Estate Podcast with Eric Mortimer

You can bet on your property assessment notices to be mailed to you every January, but can you trust everything else about them? People often look online or at their assessment letters and believe that the number they see is a true reflection of their property’s value. This can be a mistake. The city of Calgary does assessments to calculate your fair share of property taxes. However, the figure you see on your assessment doesn’t reflect what buyers would be willing to pay for your home. The city doesn’t have all the information on your property. They base the value on recent sales and on an algorithm, but they have no idea what upgrades you might have made. They also can’t take into consideration a number of other important facts. The kind of data they use to generate your assessment might be more accurate in areas where homes are identical, but it otherwise this value isn’t of much practical use to you. Also, the assessments the city issues are instantly out of date when you receive them. “You wouldn’t trust your health to a website’s best guess, so don’t trust the value of your home to one either.” As the great Wayne Gretzky used to say, “Skate to where the puck is going, not to where it has been.” This applies to real estate, as well. The market is changing all the time. Your assessment is kind of like WebMD. If you’re curious about a health issue, you may turn to websites like WebMD to search for your symptoms. However, when you are truly serious about obtaining a diagnosis, you most likely turn to a medical professional or specialist. You wouldn’t trust your health to a website’s best guess, so don’t trust the value of your home to one either. In order to know what your home is truly worth, you’ll need to contact a trusted advisor. If you like, you can send your assessment to me. I would be happy to send you some recent comparables. Also, if you have any other questions or would like more information, feel free to give me a call or send me an email. I look forward to hearing from you soon.