Municipal assessment does not grant you real estate knowledge the day you decide to sell. Since it is done every three years, it is not up to date. If you use this to estimate your property’s value, it might distort your selling price and might put you at a disadvantage if you are the seller.

Conversely, market value must reflect as close as possible your property’s true value by taking many factors into consideration. It reflects the real estate market on the determined date of the sale and must therefore be more precise.

What is a municipal assessment?

The municipal assessment is an estimation of your property value done by the municipality to establish the taxes to be paid during the year. The higher the municipal value is, the more taxes you will pay. It is an indicator for the selling price, but it is not enough to establish your property’s real value.

This assessment is made from July 1^st and is done every 3 years. It helps you get an approximation of properties’ value but not a detailed one for each and everyone. Therefore, you can’t rely on it as the market can evolve between 2 assessments.

Furthermore, the municipal assessment will not, most of the time, take into consideration all the features of your property; it is a mass assessment, and one surveyor will assess more than 20,000 properties without going into all of them.

To sum up, the municipal assessment is an insufficient indicator to decide the property’s true value, therefore it is illogical to rely solely on it to estimate the selling price of a property.

What about the market value?

The market value represents your property’s real value at a precise date. It is the most probable selling price for a property in a free market where buyers and sellers can access to the same information. This value is calculated once the property is up for sale to take into considerations the evolution of the real estate market. It is not a definite and exact value as it depends on the real estate market’s supply and demand.

Two professionals can help you find this value:

• Real estate brokers: they take into consideration all your property’s aspects and he can help you set a realistic price closer to the market value since they have expertise on the area and the market.
• Chartered appraisers: with their comprehensive training in appraising, they will help you assess the market value of your home precisely. They will survey the house to decide its condition and will then compare prices of other homes in the area to finish by writing a detailed report based on their analysis.

To find the value in the most precise way possible, many methods can be used:

• A comparison of sold properties or similar in the neighbourhood’s prices and their evolution
• The evaluation of the replacement cost, which consists of estimating what it would cost today to replace the property (the cost of reconstruction minus the functional obsolescence observed).
• The evaluation of the income and net income that the property can generate, important for rental properties

Montreal is currently a highly active market in which demands are high, so the market value is on the rise. These market conditions make it even more necessary for the intervention of a professional to guide you in your real estate project and to help you estimate the best-selling price for your property.

Do not hesitate to contact me if you have a real estate project in Ahuntsic-Cartierville or any other market in Montreal. It will be my pleasure to help you and assist you!