Burnaby homeowner complains $1.3 million property assessment “too low” and gets $7,700 increase on appeal

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      Burnaby homeowner Gurdev Hayre thought it wasn’t fair.

      The property assessments of his neighbours went up in 2021, but his didn’t.

      Hayre wanted a “fair assessment” of his 4014 Napier Street home, and so he brought the matter before a B.C. Property Assessment Appeal Board (PAAB).

      The property owner believed that the $1,352,300 assessment of his home was “too low”.

      “He says the assessment should be $1,504,000 which he says is the average of three assessments of properties in his neighbourhood,” PAAB panel chair Dale Pope related in his decision and order.

      Moreover, Hayre submitted that the assessed value of his home did “not increase enough for the 2021 assessment”.

      “To demonstrate this, he provided assessments of other properties whose assessed values increased by over $100,000 while the subject did not,” Pope recalled.

      Hayre argued that this is “not fair”.

      The homeowner also provided assessed values of similar looking properties in Vancouver, Surrey, and Delta.

      He said that these properties had year-over-year assessed value increases because property values are rising across the Lower Mainland, Pope noted.

      Actually, a check with B.C. Assessment online shows that Hayre’s 2021 assessment of $1,352,300 went down by $5,500 compared to 2020.

      For 2020, his property was assessed at a slightly higher amount of $1,357,800.

      Hayre’s single-family home measures 3,140 square feet and it sits on a 50- by 120-foot lot in North Burnaby.

      Going back to Pope’s decision and order, the PAAB panel chair noted that the assessor of Area #10 or the North Fraser Region did not ask for an increase of Hayre’s assessment during the appeal.

      What the assessor did was present four property sales and used accepted appraisal techniques to come up with a comparison.

      “The adjusted sales prices for the comparables ranged in price from $1,023,000 to $1,409,000,” Pope stated.

      One of the four sales was the “most comparable as it had an almost identical lot size very close to the subject and required no time adjustment due to its sale in early July 2020”.

      “With a slightly larger lot (100 square feet) and a slightly superior improvement, its adjusted sale price was $1,380,000,” Pope wrote.

      Because Hayre’s property was “slightly inferior, the Assessor concluded that the subject market value should be less than the Sale #2 selling price and settled on a value of $1,360,000”.

      Pope accepted the assessor's analysis.

      “It deals with market sales of similar properties to the subject and adjusts the sale prices using accepted appraisal techniques,” he continued.

      As a result, he found Hayre's property value to be $1,360,000.

      "This is slightly more than the assessed value of $1,352,300,” Pope stated.

      This means that Hayre’s property will have a slight increase in its assessment by $7,700.

      Hayre failed to convince the PAAB that his property’s assessment should increase by as much as others.

      As Pope explained, the board has “long held that selecting a few properties with higher assessments does not prove that the subject’s assessment is too low”.

      “It only demonstrates that other properties have higher assessments,” Pope wrote.

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