Understand your Edmonton property tax assessment.

What an Edmonton property assessment is

Your assessment is a mass-appraisal figure the City calculates to divide the property-tax bill fairly across roughly 439,000 properties. Alberta's Municipal Government Act fixes two dates every assessment is built on:

• Valuation date — July 1 of the year before the tax year. Your 2026 assessment reflects what the market looked like on July 1, 2025, not today.
• Condition date — December 31 of that same year. The assessment reflects your property's physical condition as of that date — a renovation finished afterward won't show up until the following year's assessment.

Those two fixed dates are why an assessment and today's market routinely disagree without either one being "wrong" — they're deliberately describing different moments in time, for a different purpose (dividing a tax bill, not pricing a sale).

What to check on your assessment

The most common source of an inaccurate assessment is an error in the property details on file, not the valuation itself. Fields worth verifying against your own knowledge of the property:

• Address and legal description
• Property classification
• Lot size and dimensions
• Building/living area
• Year built
• Basement development
• Garage
• Secondary suite status
• Recorded renovations or permits

If one of these is wrong — a bedroom count, a garage that no longer exists, a suite that was never actually built — that's a factual correction, and typically the fastest kind of assessment concern to resolve.

Where to review your assessment

The City's own tools are the authoritative source, not this page:

• MyProperty — your assessed value, the property details the City has on file, and the comparable sales the City used. Sign in with the access code on your assessment or tax notice.
• City of Edmonton — Assessment of Properties — how assessments are calculated and general program information.

When to contact the City

Before filing a formal complaint, you can call a City assessor directly at 311 (780-442-5311 from outside Edmonton). Many concerns — especially a factual error in the property details — can be resolved this way, without a formal complaint or a hearing.

When a formal complaint may be appropriate

A complaint to the Assessment Review Board addresses your assessed value only — it does not challenge the tax rate, and it doesn't change what a buyer would pay for your home. Deadlines are strict, filing fees apply, and both can change from year to year, so the notice you actually received and the Board's own published information control, not this summary. The full process, current fees, and what the Board can and can't decide are covered in how to appeal your Edmonton property tax assessment.

Assessment versus selling price

Your assessment is one data point about the property. A current selling strategy also considers recent comparable sales, active competition, condition, renovations, layout, buyer demand and timing — all of which move faster than an annual, tax-purpose valuation can track. The difference between these two questions, and why both are useful for different reasons, is covered in full in tax assessment vs. a professional evaluation.