Historically, property assessments in North America lag changes in market prices. As a result, I found it a little surprising that property assessments for Vancouver housings have actually fallen a little on average. That doesn’t seem to square with what the realtor industry has been telling us.

The most likely culprit is that most of the eye-boggling price increases that we hear about are at the very top end of the market. And, there may be a disproportionate amount of activity at the high end as this is where a great deal of the investments are made by foreign buyers.

The calculations in the table above use all properties in the city, not just those that are being bought and sold. Because all properties are being included, the slower market in the middle- to low-end influence the results. This flatter-performing section of the market is likely de-emphasized by an industry that has a clear interest in seeing prices go up.

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