VICTORIA, Feb. 10, 2012 /CNW/ - British Columbian property owner satisfaction is up significantly in 2012 as BC Assessment announced today a 25 per cent decrease over last year's property assessment appeal rates.

Both public inquiry and Notice of Complaint (appeal) statistics decreased for 2012 when compared to the same time period in 2011 (January 1 to January 31):

• 39,084 general inquiries were received province wide at 16 BC Assessment area offices, an 8 per cent decrease over last year's total of 42,562.
• 12,823 formal Notice of Complaint appeal letters were received requesting independent assessment reviews by a Property Assessment Review Panel (PARP). This is a decrease of 25 per cent from last year's total of 17,080 letters requesting reviews.
• 84 per cent of appeals were submitted using either BC Assessment's convenient online appeal form or via email, up from 77 per cent in 2011.
• A total of 398,404 property owners visited www.bcassessment.ca (up 15 per cent from 2011).
• A total of 3,076,418 searches were performed using BC Assessment's free online service, e-valueBC, to compare property assessments (up 28 per cent from 2011).

Any person is entitled to file a Notice of Complaint (or appeal) about an assessment on the grounds set out in Section 32 of the Assessment Act and to have that assessment reviewed by an independent PARP. An important note is that the final number of 2012 appeals is likely to further decrease as some property owners opt to withdraw their appeals during the PARP process, February 1 to March 15.

Year to year, over 98 per cent of property owners accept their property assessments without proceeding to a formal, independent review of their assessments. As a percentage, less than one per cent of property owners have appealed their assessments for 2012.

BC Assessment values over 1.9 million properties in nine separate property classes. The value of all real estate on the annual provincial assessment roll is $1,106,710,671,771 for 2012, an increase of over 6 per cent from 2011.

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For further information:

Media contact:
Tim Morrison, Communications Coordinator, BC Assessment Tel. 250-595-6211 Ext. 251