Just the other day I received MPAC (Municipal Property Assessment Corporation) report. I'm really impressed with work these guys did with the website. What is good for this report and what does it mean to you as a home owner –here is an idea.
Since majority of us are living in houses and thinking about it as an investment it’s very useful to get these reports and get a sense of what happens with real estate market. It is not accurate market reflection but more of the trend. As a rule the report is falling behind the actual market by 2~3 years.
So what we are looking for are two things.

1. What is the trend in real estate market - AboutMyProperty TM
2. How much property taxes you will be paying in a near future - Property Assessment Notice

AboutMyProperty TM
Let me elaborate a little on market trends. There was an announcement in most recent report I received about new service – AboutMyProperty TM at http://www.mpac.ca/ Letter contained username and password to online account. There was plenty of very interesting and useful information inside of the letter but most important is an online research tool. I can’t stress out enough about its importance. So when you login you can find out what your neighbours properties worth. This is huge by getting this information you can assess where you stand with your property, are you in a risk, what is a trend in the neighbourhood and so on. It’s first time in order to evaluate my situation I don’t need to go to MLS and spent hours researching the data. 
 

Property Assessment Notice
“The assessed value of your property is used as the basis for calculating your property taxes. MPAC’s role is to accurately value and classify properties in Ontario. Your municipality/local taxing authority is responsible for setting property tax rates.” Basically that means what is written in property assessment notice that’s what you are going to pay as property taxes in the next year or two. So if you want to know exactly what is your tax payment for the next year you take Assessed value of your property from corresponding tax year and multiply by Tax rate of your municipality. Majority of municipalities post Tax Rates on their web sites so just google “Toronto Property Tax Rates” (instead of Toronto put your municipality name) and you will get tax rates.

So the formula looks like that:
(Assed value of your property) x (Residential Tax Rate) = (Annual property tax)