Ahead of budget approvals, Perth County Council received a 101-course on the work the province’s property assessors do.
On Feb. 2, council heard a presentation from the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC).
MPAC are Ontario’s property experts who assess and classify the more than 5.5 million properties across the province.
Jeremy Gough, the account manager for the county at MPAC, gave the presentation. He told council that in the last year, Ontario has grown by approximately 45,000 new residential homes, and they added $37 billion to the province’s assessment polls.
Assessment polls are used by municipalities to make informed decisions on property taxes.
“Maintaining Ontario’s property database is very important,” Gough told council. “Property data is continuously updated so that municipal records are accurate when stakeholders are making important tax decisions.”
MPAC inspects and assesses new construction and renovations, as well as updating property assessments. They assess residential properties based on five major factors, including location, lot size, quality of construction, square footage, and age of property.
Commercial property is valued on how much revenue they could generate. Property types that are unique and rarely sold – like grain elevators for instance – are measured through a process calculating the value of the land and the cost of rebuilding structures on that land.
While the scheduled 2020 reassessment was pushed back, in November of last year MPAC issued 3,300 reassessment notices to Perth County landowners.
A key point made during the presentation was that assessed value does not equal taxation. There is no 1:1 relationship between a change in assessment and a change in property taxes.
No update was provided on when the province-wide reassessment will be, though Gough reassured council that once that information is available it will be publicized.
