Municipal Assessment vs. Market Value: Why They're Not the Same in Quebec

Every property in Quebec carries two "values" that are easy to confuse: its municipal assessment (the value recorded on the property assessment roll) and its market value (what a buyer would actually pay for it today). They describe the same building, but they answer different questions, and the gap between them can be wide.

What is the municipal assessment for?

The municipal assessment is the value your municipality (or its MRC or agglomeration) assigns to your property on the property assessment roll (rôle d'évaluation foncière). Its primary purpose is taxation: it's the basis for calculating your property taxes.

• Municipal property taxes: the municipality multiplies the assessed value by its tax rate to produce your tax bill.
• School taxes: also calculated from the assessed value.
• Transfer duties (the "welcome tax"): charged when you buy, based on the greater of the price paid or the municipal assessment adjusted by the roll's comparative factor.

The roll is filed in three-year cycles and built on a reference date set at July 1, roughly 18 months before the roll takes effect. So the values on a roll that applies in 2023 reflect the market as of July 1, 2021, and stay frozen for three years.

Why the assessment differs from market value

1. The time lag

The housing market moves every day; the roll is frozen for three years from an already-dated reference point. In a rising market, the municipal assessment therefore trails behind market value. In a falling market, it can sit above it.

2. Mass appraisal

Municipal assessors don't inspect each house individually. They use mass appraisal: statistical models applied to large groups of comparable properties. The result is fair "on average," but it doesn't necessarily capture what makes your home different.

3. What the roll can't see

The assessor has usually never been inside your home. The renovated kitchen, the finished basement, overall condition, quality of finishes, the view, a major renovation (or the lack of one), all weigh heavily on a buyer, but are poorly reflected on the roll, if at all.

4. A different goal

The roll aims for tax fairness among the properties in a municipality, not to predict your selling price. Market value depends on real demand: how many buyers, bidding wars, the timing of the sale, the unique features of the property.

How big can the gap be?

The gap varies from property to property and year to year. Quebec even accounts for it officially: each year a median proportion of the roll and a comparative factor are published, measuring exactly the relationship between roll values and recent sale prices. When the market heats up, that factor climbs, proof that everyone knows the roll lags the market.

In practice, it's common for a home to sell well above (or, in a soft market, below) its municipal assessment. So never assume that "roll value = selling price."

What to do with the two numbers

• To estimate a selling price, rely on recent comparable sales in your area rather than the roll. That's exactly what Evalio does: start from the municipal assessment, then adjust it with the neighbourhood's real transactions.
• For your taxes, if you believe your assessment is wrong, you can file a request for review (demande de révision) with your municipal body, usually before May 1 of the first year of a new roll. A successful challenge lowers your taxes, but changes nothing about what a buyer will pay.

The bottom line

The municipal assessment is a tax tool, computed en masse and frozen in time. Market value is what a buyer is willing to pay today, here, for your specific home. The two sometimes look alike, but there's no reason they should be identical.