So what’s your home worth?

How did the greatest recession since the Dirty 30s affect the value of a Windsor home?

Starting at the end of this month, 165,000 property owners in Windsor and Essex County will begin receiving their newest assessment notices from the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation.

Homeowners are currently taxed based on property values pegged during MPAC’s last province-wide reassessment at the start of 2008, a time when the local economy was still humming.

By the fall of that year, however, the red-hot American housing bubble had burst, Wall Street was crashing, global economies were faltering and Windsor’s automotive and manufacturing sectors were in a free-fall. But through it all, a Windsor home kept its former value — at least in the eyes of the assessors whose calculations help determine how much taxes are levied.

“I’m curious to see what’s happened after four years,” said Leamington realtor Brad Reiter of Critchlow Realty. In an area whose economy was hit hard, “you hope things (property values) remain at least relatively flat,” said Reiter, a former MPAC property inspector.

Detailed figures for this area won’t be made public until the local reassessment notices go out starting Oct. 29, said Annette Beaudoin, a spokeswoman for MPAC’s Windsor-Essex office.

While a recent Ontario snapshot showed property values have in general rebounded across the province, the local picture is not as rosy, according to Beaudoin.

“Certainly because of the economic downturn in the automotive sector, our values are not increasing like ... other areas of the province,” she said.

The latest reassessments will be used by municipal authorities to set tax rates for 2013 to 2016.

“The preliminary information we’ve got, nothing official, is that residential (local values) are fairly stable,” said city treasurer Onorio Colucci. That compares to an estimate for the province as a whole of property values having increased 18 per cent since 2008, he added.

“An assessment increase doesn’t necessarily mean your taxes increase,”

“CERTAINLY BECAUSE OF THE ECONOMIC DOWNTURN IN THE AUTOMOTIVE SECTOR, OUR VALUES ARE NOT INCREASING LIKE ... OTHER AREAS OF THE PROVINCE.” ANNETTE BEAUDION MPAC SPOKESWOMAN

said Beaudoin. That holds true for the reverse as well.

The key information — how a property value has changed compared to the municipal average — will be indicated on the notices going out in the mail, said Beaudoin. If you’re a Windsor taxpayer, it means that, even if city council manages another tax freeze, your municipal tax burden could still go up — or down — in the coming year depending on how assessment in your neighbourhood compare to others.

The MPAC assessments are “not meant to generate additional revenues” for municipalities and schools, said Beaudoin, but simply to provide a fairer basis upon which to levy taxes.

Colucci said there are two drivers for local taxes — the total amount the city spends to provide services and the total assessment value. If the latter goes down due to factories closing or taxpayers fleeing for greener pastures elsewhere, taxes for those remaining will go up, he said.

Reiter said property owners can conduct their own “eyeball test” to determine reassessment fairness. For example, if you live in a neighbourhood that saw hot real estate sales, don’t be surprised if your property’s assessed value has gone up.

Beaudoin said each notice will indicate how a property has fared compared to the municipal average, and it will provide information on how to find out more information or launch an appeal (the deadline is April 1, 2013). Homeowners, for example, can track by computer the assessments of comparable properties in their neighbourhood.

Both Reiter and Beaudoin said location is generally the prime determinant of a property’s changing value. Other key factors are lot dimension, age of building, living area and quality of construction and alterations.