BC NOTARIES WHAT WE DO AND OUR PROFESSIONAL FRIENDS
Creating Uniform Assessments and Trusted Property Information Jason Grant, President and Chief Executive Officer of BC Assessment since 2017, has spent his entire career analyzing and determining British Columbia property assessments over the past 30 years. Jason Grant
Jason has also been an active member of the Real Estate Institute of BC (REIBC) since 1994, having served on the Board of Directors as well as being elected President from 2014-2015. It is through his association with REIBC that Jason has gained an appreciation for the important work of BC Notaries. As an Accredited Appraiser with the Appraisal Institute of Canada (AACI), Jason first joined BC Assessment in 1991. Over the years, he moved into various leadership roles including Greater Vancouver Assessor and then Vice President of Assessment with the responsibility for overseeing the province’s assessments for over 2 million properties with a combined value of more than $2 trillion. That has provided him an extensive amount of experience with complex appraisal and related legal matters. During the 1990s, the shifts in BC’s real estate market were relatively uneventful. By 2004, Jason became the Greater Vancouver Assessor, just as property values began to skyrocket—and have continued to do so almost every year since.
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“For years, BC Assessment had delivered our annual assessment notices within a mostly stable market of gradual ups and downs, and then in the 2000s, percentage increases suddenly started going up in the double-digits each year,” explains Grant. “In places such as Vancouver, homes were rapidly growing in value, reflecting the very hot real estate market that has never really slowed down.”
“When the pandemic hit in 2020, we initially did not know what to expect with the impact on the market,” “When the pandemic hit in 2020, we initially did not know what to expect with the impact on the market,” adds Grant. “But, it quickly became apparent that there was not only a heighted demand among homebuyers during COVID-19, but also that demand was everywhere across the province in communities of every size. As we do with each year, we carefully analyzed all BC Notaries Association
our market data and determined property values to be uniformly up in most areas of BC.” First founded in 1974 and governed by a Board of Directors appointed by the provincial government, BC Assessment is a Crown corporation that serves as BC’s trusted provider of property assessments. It collects, monitors, and analyzes data throughout the year and provides property assessments as per the Assessment Act for over 2 million properties across the province. “Our vision is to be a dynamic and reliable assessment-services provider that supports strong and vibrant communities in BC,” states Grant. “For everything from schools and hospitals to public safety and transportation to libraries and parks and rec centres , our assessments provide the foundation of funding for the important local services that we all rely on every day.” BC Assessment independently and uniformly determines all property assessments based on their market values as of July 1 each year. By early January, those assessments are delivered to Volume 30, Number 3, Winter 2021
