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In November you received our first email entitled "Municipal Property Assessment Corporation - A wolf in Sheep's Clothing." The purpose of that email was to try to give you some understanding about challenging MPAC's valuation of your property for the 2004 municipal taxation year that is shortly to be upon us.

Recently, MPAC has started to send out form letters to all property owners who sent MPAC a "Request for Reconsideration." The letter advises that MPAC will try to make a review before March 31, 2004 which is your deadline for filing an appeal with the Assessment Review Board. Some property owners are under the impression that unless they send MPAC a "Request for Reconsideration" they will not be entitled to bring a formal complaint or an appeal before the Assessment Review Board. This is not the case. The only consequence of not filing a "Request for Reconsideration" is that you don't get a refund of the $50. which you will have to pay the Assessment Review Board on filing appeal proceedings. In any event you are only entitled to a refund if the appeal is withdrawn before the hearing.

Included as an attachment with this email is a Summary of the new Rules of the Assessment Review Board which should help you in initiating appeal proceedings with Board. Unless you take this step before March 31, 2004, that is within the next 3 months, MPAC will not likely give your review request much consideration. Why not? Because, MPAC knows that without an appeal you have no remedy to challenge them.

You don't need to hire a lawyer to attend with you before the Assessment Review Board. The attached summary should help demystify the appeal process. It will also help you in your dealings with MPAC during the "Request for Reconsideration." They should be prepared to provide you with the same information that they will have to provide should you not settle with them and proceed with the appeal. Under the Board Rules MPAC must provide:

1. Information as to the current value claimed and how it was calculated by them.

2. A full statement of every issue that they intend to raise including identification of similar properties.

3. Identification of the vicinity which MPAC claims as part of the assessment, which they also describe as the "homogeneous area" of equivalent values.

4. They must list the information or documents known to them as being the evidence they rely on to support their assessment of your property.

MPAC tries to support its assessment valuation of your property by offering you a free on-line viewing for up to 12 "comparable properties." Bear in mind that they are not referring to "actual sales" for the relevant period which for all practical purposes is possibly a two year period predating June 30, 2003. What they are referring to in their own "assessment valuations" which may be as fatally flawed as their assessment of your property.

So, what you want to do is ask MPAC for their data base on all actual sales in your neighborhood for that period. Alternatively, if you know a real estate agent that is prepared to help you can ask them to look up actual sales in your area that are recorded by the Multiple Listing Service. You can bet your bottom dollar that MPAC is accessing that data base. In fact MPAC probably has access to other data bases which have been paid for by public money and should therefore be freely available to you.

If you take up the offer to view MPAC's comparable assessments they will likely want to charge you cash money for additional viewings. In fact the full assessment roles may be viewed free of charge at your local councillor's office or at some local public libraries.

Make sure that you keep records of everything you do and make notes of all conversations with MPAC's people and with the people at the Assessment Review Board. Don't trust to your memory because information which you obtain today if not recorded will surely flow like water through a seive and be lost down the drain. Why not start by opening a file and placing this email and the attachment in it? We will be sending out future emails when additional ideas occur to us. We also welcome your feedback!

Feel free to send this email and attachment to like minded property owners who are fed up with being hosed by MPAC. You might consider complaining to your local Councillor and your MPP!