Do What Many Professional Appeal Agents Do- Work the Appeal System to Your Advantage

BC Assessment relies upon the public’s cooperation with the assessment system. Professional agents appeal thousands of properties every year and often comply with BC Assessment information requests only when they so choose.

So, if it’s to your advantage to withhold information as well, then here is what the professionals do:

• Ignore everything to do with the late winter Review Panel, unless BC Assessment wants your corroboration of a value decrease at that level of the appeal.

• Ignore a BC Assessment inspection request of the property- it’s not mandatory if, and until, the Appeal Board orders it later in the appeal process.

• Ignore requests to provide to BC Assessment appeal reliance documents (your information); it’s not necessary until the Appeal Board orders it. Items such as soil/pollution studies, structural reports, income information, sale agreements, lease copies, etc.

At any time that the latter is unfolding, you can ask BC Assessment for the following for your appeal:

• Your property’s BC Assessment Property Valuation Summary (PVS) and the Property Record Card (PRC), if it’s a commercial/industrial.investment property.

• From 6 to 10 PVS’s or PRC’s for those properties you believe are “like” properties to yours, for comparison to your property for “consistent” valuation.

  The Act says the system must “ensure accuracy and that assessments are at actual value applied in a consistent manner in the municipality.” So, you can then make sure that superior properties to yours aren’t assessed the same or lower than your assessment. That would be inequitable and grounds for a successful appeal.

  Equity appeals are the most complicated for BC Assessment and take the most time, which is to your advantage.