My Toronto property assessment arrived in the mail yesterday. It wasn't something I was looking forward to having heard that big increases were expected in the neighbourhood I just moved into earlier this year. I was prepared to cringe. It has been more than three years since assessments were made in Toronto and Leslieville has been one of those hot hoods that's seen property values skyrocket.

Cracking open the envelope from the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation I was immediately confronted with detailed information how MPAC assesses properties. The key factors are location, lot dimension, living area, quality of construction and the age of the structure adjusted for renovations.

There were also instructions how I could appeal the assessment (which I plan to do and hear usually results in a ruling in the home owner's favour) as well as my own login and password to the MPAC web site where I could whittle away hours on end looking at more details of my home's assessment AND compare it with up to 30 other properties in the area.

So that's what I decided to do. And here are the shocking stats:

1. According to MPAC, the value of my home increased a whopping 41% in three years.
2. Despite this, the value of my home according to MPAC is MUCH LOWER than the amount I paid for it just a few months ago. (Woohoo overpaying and housing crash combo)
3. The value of my home was reduced by about 7% because it's semi-detached and 3% because it doesn't have a driveway or parking space.

Unfortunately, however, when I attempted to compare my home with other properties I didn't have any luck. To do this, MPAC offers a somewhat clunky map interface which as far as I can tell doesn't work on a Mac. (I tried both Firefox and Safari). So, until I get my hands on a computer with Internet Explorer I think I'm sort of out of luck.

In the meantime though I'm still at a bit of a loss how all this will translate into my new property tax rate. The assessment takes pains to point out that an assessment increase does not necessarily mean my property taxes will increase so I'm sort of still wondering when and how that's going to be resolved.