How the City Knows How Much My Property is Worth: Explained with Statuettes

How does the City know how much my property is worth?

In order to figure out the value of your property, the city uses a process called "mass appraisal."

City assessors start by reviewing sales data on all the properties that have sold in Edmonton in the previous years, and they sort that data based on the type of property. All the houses grouped together, all the condos grouped together and all the offices grouped together.

Then, they use sales and property data on different types of properties to create a statistical model of property values, which lets them figure out how things like the size of the property, the neighbourhood it's in and what year it was built, affect its value.

Then, assessors compare your property to this model to determine what your property would have most likely sold for on July 1st of the previous year.

Finally, assessors review the results and make adjustments if necessary to make sure the model is working right.

Think of it like a vintage store. To figure out the value of this super-fly ceramic pug statuette, the store looks at what different stores are selling ceramic dog sculptures for.
Then, it compares the individual ceramic pug against the results, considering things like: How much have models of canines lovingly hand-crafted in clay sold for in the past, the quality of the pug in question and where exactly ‘ol Captain Snickerdoodle comes from, in order to figure out its—sorry, his—specific value.

And again, to make sure the results check out, there’s someone who can come along and take another look. And that’s how the City uses mass appraisal to figure out how much your property is worth.

For more information on property assessments and what a good boy Mr.Snickerdoodle, yes he is, visit http://edmonton.ca/assessment.

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