• A general assessment means that new values are established for all properties in the city. Provincial legislation requires the City of Winnipeg to do this every two years using market values as of a specified reference date.

• An assessment is the City’s estimate of the value of your property as of a specific date. 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.

• 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 each property owner pays a fair share of the property tax.

• 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 exempt properties include most schools and hospitals, educational institutions, places of worship, charities, non-profit daycares, and municipal or religion-owned cemeteries.

Several factors go into assessing your property:

• It is assessed at its market value, or the price your property could normally sell for on the real estate market as of the reference date. The reference date is April 1 of the year two years before the general assessment year.
• The City assesses the value of both your land and buildings to get a total property assessment. It estimates your property value studying sales of similar properties and comparing lot size, local improvements, and location, as well as building age, size, quality of construction, and condition. 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.

• 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.

• No. The City only employs so many valuation staff members for Winnipeg’s 200,000 properties and these staff members visit approximately 10,000 residences a year. Usually, a building is inspected 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.

• The Assessment and Taxation Department will be sending out two separate mailings to cover the City of Winnipeg. The first mailing is October 28, 2016 with approximately 100,000 residential preview letters being mailed to property owners within market regions 3,4,5,6 and 7. The second mailing will be on February 10, 2017 with approximately 105,000 residential preview letters being mailed to property owners within market regions 1,2,8,9, and 10.