TAXES AND ASSESSMENTS - HOW DOES YOUR HOME COMPARE?

 

 

 

MUNICIPAL PROPERTY ASSESSMENT CORPORATION

 

 All municipal property assessments in Ontario are set by the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC). It maintains detailed property information records, and they're available to all property owners!

MPAC has an amazing interactive tool on its website that lets you track and compare local properties. Do you want to know about recent sales in your area and how your neighbors’ homes compare to yours?

MPAC's free online About-My-Property service tells you almost everything about properties in Kingston. You can look up as many as 100 other properties each year and compare them to your own. Find out another property's lot size, recent sold price, age, square footage, construction, number of bedrooms/bathrooms, basement finishing, and more.

Just go to the link below and click on About-My-Property. To register to use the service, you will need your notice of assessment from MPAC. You only get one once every four years when property in Ontario is re-assessed. It has an access code number that will let you register to view property information. So if you can't find yours, get your property roll number from a recent tax bill and call MPAC directly and they will set you up. Only property owners can access the system.

MPAC keeps sales records from the past five years only. Very recent sales (the Sold sign that just went up on your street) can take as long as six months to be integrated into MPAC records.

If you need the latest sales figures, please give me a call.

TIP – Watch the excellent short video on the About-My-Property service before trying it. 

 CLICK HERE

 

 WHAT'S YOUR NEIGHBOR PAYING?

Ontario property owners received their updated tax assessments in recent months, based on a valuation date of January 1, 2012. The resulting increase in property taxes will then be phased in over the next four years so there are no large tax hits in a single year.

This link is the City of Kingston's quick tax assessment lookup. Just plug in any address to check a property's tax class, current assessed value, and amount of tax levied. 

TAX LOOKUP - CLICK HERE

 NOTE: There is usually some discrepancy between current market value and assessments for tax purposes. While market prices in your neighborhood are factored into your assessment, the formulas are heavily influenced by the cold hard facts about your property – house size, lot size and frontage, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, type of heating, garage, pool etc. Interior updating is not usually taken into account.

 

 

The city of Kingston does NOT determine property assessments. That's MPAC's job. City council only sets the mill rate, the factor by which your taxes are calculated based on assessment.