January 1 is a key day for New Brunswick real property owners. A team of over 100 assessors must establish the "real and true value" as of January 1 each year for every property in New Brunswick . The Province maintains a web site about assessments (was nbassessment.ca) - now http://www.snb.ca/assessment/ where it indicates this involves over 440,000 properties. And with every subdivision of land the number of individual properties continues to grow.

Assessments are influenced by market value and the market value of real property may change over the year since the last assessment. Comparable sales of real property throughout a year give a general indication of market value and the most recent sales give the best indication of current market value. That is why January 1 is a key date. Sales closest preceding that date tend to give the best indication of the value on January 1.

The residential real estate market is currently softening in some areas of New Brunswick for the first time in a number of years. Perhaps current market sales will effect 2009 assessments. In this post I will focus only on market sales of existing residential properties in the city of Moncton. Posts on Dieppe and Riverview will follow later.

Comparing 78 Moncton residential MLS® sales in the last six weeks to the 2008 assessments for the same properties reveals that on average these properties sold for 8.79% more than their January 1, 2008 assessments.  (There is one factor that should be taken into account which would somewhat lower this number and that is some of these sales include chattels such as moveable household appliances that technically do not fit the definition of real property.)

The majority of these 79 properties sold for more than their January 1, 2008 assessments, however some did sell for less. In the new year I plan to do another comparison covering the last six weeks of 2008, which I will also post.

Here is a link to the Assessment Act of New Brunswick - http://www.gnb.ca/0062/regs/a-14reg.htm