Finding Assessment and Sale Information

Information on tax assessment and last sale price for properties in the Province of New Brunswick are freely available online through Service New Brunswick.  This is one source of useful information if you are considering selling or buying a home in the province, or if you are wondering if your tax assessment seems fair compared to others in your area. In this blog posting I will take you through the steps in looking up the information.

In order to do the search you will either need the property account number (PAN), the parcel identifier number (PID) or the civic address.  If you want to search on your own property you can get the PAN and PID from your tax bill, but if searching for comparison properties you will probably be doing it by the civic address, so I outline that approach.

First go to the Service New Brunswick website, and then from the most requested links on the right select "Property Assessment".  From the subsequent page choose "Assessment comparisons and sale prices."  From there select the Search Now button. Now the link may well change, but as of this writing you can go directly to the search with this link.

You will select "Search by Location".  Now from there you will need to enter three pieces of information, a Taxing Authority, Civic Number and Street Name.  While the Taxing Authority does have a drop down list, the length and order makes it challenging to find the location that you want.  For convenience I have given the Taxing Authority numbers for some of the locations covered by this blog (L.S.D. is the local service district).

• Alma (village) – 605
• Cape Tormentine (village) – 631
• Campobello – 531
• Dieppe (city) – 602
• Dorchester (village) – 609 
• Dorchester (L.S.D.) – 624 
• Fundy Bay (L.S.D.) – 525
• Harvey (L.S.D.) – 617
• Hillsborough (village) – 606
• Hillsborough (L.S.D.) – 615
• Hopewell (L.S.D.) – 616
• Lepreau (L.S.D.) – 511
• Moncton (city) – 600
• Moncton (L.S.D.) – 625
• Pennfield (L.S.D.) – 512
• Port Elgin (village) – 608
• Riverside Albert (village) – 607
• Riverview (town) – 601
• Sackville (town) – 604
• Sackville (L.S.D.) – 623
• Saint John (city) –550
• Shediac (town) – 603
• St. Martins (village) – 551
• St. Martins (L.S.D.) – 552

While if you know the exact address you can enter all information, it turns out that you can leave the street number blank, and just enter the taxing authority and the street name.  If you do that you will get a listing of all of the properties on a street, which is handy when seeking comparison properties on your street. Note that they are arranged by first number, so for example 1, 107 and 11 would be close together and before 2 or 23.

Once you find a property you want to look up click on its PAN number and you will get a listing like the one shown (except I have whited out the information that would identify the property). The Location will give you the street number, and the Property Description will indicate for example if it is a house and land with associated garage.  The current assessment gives the assessed value for tax purposes.  Note that this is not always closely linked to selling values (which are often somewhat higher in many regions of New Brunswick).  The current tax levy for the year shown gives the actual taxes prior to any reductions for status.

Below that, if the property has sold since the period when listings went online in New Brunswick, then the selling price and date of sale will be indicated.   This can be very valuable when seeking comparisons to help you in deciding an appropriate price for your house (or to see if an asking price is reasonable on a house that you are planning to offer to purchase).  Of course it is always wise to seek professional advice, and we will cover the differences between house appraisals (done by registered appraisers) and comparitive market analysis (done by local real estate agents) in a future post. Also when using the information from Service New Brunswick keep in mind that a house that has not sold for a long period may not be assessed equitably with one that has a more recent sale history.  Other factors may also come into play. Service New Brunswick has a page of frequently asked questions with respect to property assessment.