Home assessments are nonesense
Back in the days when I was a child, I asked my Dad who were the two people coming into our yard? He said they were people from the assessment office to take a look at our property both inside and out to determine what the property assessment should be. No computers in those days. The assessments made were very fair to all homeowners because the comparisons were based on apples to apples.
Today, we have a different story. The assessment people sit a desk, assessing our properties based on real estate sales in the area of your homes. All they know is the square footage of our houses, thus taking average real estate sales in the location of your home, based on home square footage, and dividing the square footage into the average sales price and applying that amount to the square footage of our homes. Total nonesense.
As it is now, you could have a home, that has a unfinished basement. You can finish the basement, and the assessment office does not know that your basement is now finished. You could build a large sundeck on the back of your house, and the assessment office will know nothing about this. I once owned a two storey home that had a total square footage of 3,000 square feet. My neighbour behind me had a 1,050 square foot rancher. My neighbour’s assessment was $40,000 more than my assessment. We both pay our property taxes in July of each year and in reality, we are both paying bogus property taxes amounts. Neighbour is paying too much and I am paying too little.
This is a on going problem every year, and unless the assessment office does not start doing visual property checks like when I was a child, everybody paying property taxes are paying bogus untrue amounts. Go to the B.C. assessment website, and take a look at the picture of your property. It is the same picture of your property taken three years ago. Also on this website, you can compare all of the property assessments on your block. Doing this might just open your eyes to prove that the present system is totally inaccurate in regards to the amount of your assessment.
Every day you hear comments that we must go along with the times. When I was a child, people were honest, you could leave your car unlocked and your house unlocked. Nothing was ever stolen. Today, 99 per cent of the people are dishonest, you must lock your cars, lock your homes, and everything is stolen and that is because of our legal system of not using the laws that are in effect. Why not steal, as your charges if caught, are one big joke? Unbelievable!
Joe Sawchuk
Duncan