Assessment Info - General
What is a property assessment?
An assessment is the City’s estimate of the value of your property as of a specific year. The City does assessments so it can decide what percentage of its total property tax bill you must pay for your property. Generally, the idea, in its simplest form, is that if you own 1/1,000 of the City’s taxable property, you pay 1/1,000 of its property taxes.
Why does the City assess properties?
The Province’s Municipal Assessment Act requires the City to assess all property in Winnipeg so it can fairly and equitably divide the property tax it must raise. The Assessment and Taxation Department’s objective is to ensure equity by valuing all similar properties in the same way so they pay similar taxes.
What is the City’s “assessment base”?
The Assessment and Taxation Department adds the total assessed value of all the properties in Winnipeg to get its “assessment base”. The City’s “taxable assessment base” is less because provincial assessment law exempts some properties from paying school and municipal taxes. These include most schools and hospitals, educational institutions, churches, synagogues, charities, non-profit day cares, and municipal or religiously-owned cemeteries.
Assessing your property:
How does the City assess your property?
Several factors go into assessing your property:
- It is assessed at the “current market value”, or the price your property could normally sell for on the real estate market. This is done for a “reference” year which is normally the year after the last general assessment.
- The City assesses the value of both your land and buildings to get a total property assessment. It decides your land’s value by studying sales of similar properties and comparing lot size, local improvements, location, and other factors which influence its sale value. It decides your building’s assessed value by its age, size, condition, construction and materials. Even if you built it yourself, the City judges your building by the same criteria as other buildings so it can equitably assess all similar buildings.
- The City factors depreciation for normal deterioration into your building’s assessment.
What kinds of improvements increase your assessment?
Your assessment will increase if you do extensive renovating, make any structural changes which increase your living space, or build a garage, deck or swimming pool. It will not increase if you repair a building with similar materials, providing it is not part of a major modernization.
Does a valuation staff member have to visit your property to do an assessment?
No. The City only employs so many valuation staff members for Winnipeg’s 200,000 properties and the valuation staff members visit approximately 10,000 residences a year, so a building is assessed when it is built, renovated, sold, or periodically thereafter. Assessments between these times are based on a property’s physical characteristics, which are on file, real estate sales records, and renovations or improvements for which building permits were issued.