BC Assessment - Data Advice

In 1974, the Government of British Columbia created BC Assessment (BCA) as a Crown Corporation, funded primarily through a property tax levy, with the legislated mandate to provide “assessments that are uniform in the whole of the province” in accordance with the Assessment Act. Since its inception, BCA has provided uniform, fair and independent property assessments to the people of British Columbia.

Data Advice is a data product providing customers with property assessment information. It was originally created in 1976 to provide taxing authorities the data they required to perform their taxation duties. Today the product is still used by taxing authorities, First Nations governments, Provincial Governments and enterprise customers to perform various business functions.

The Data Advice data is available as both an annual full-roll XML file plus weekly XML updates, and as full-roll theme-based CSV files (complete (full roll) files, produced weekly). The themes currently available are:

general description of individual properties
street addresses of individual properties
legal descriptions of individual properties
sales history of individual properties
land characteristics of individual properties
general assessed value for property and improvements (for resources labelled "updates to yyyy roll")

A data dictionary for the theme files is provided in this resource.

Who can have Access: Use of these data is restricted to internal BC Government named users and some B.C. Post Secondary institutions. If you fall outside these parameters, please address your concerns directly with B.C. Assessment.

How to get Access: All users of these data are required to enter into an End User License Agreement (EULA) under the authority of their Ministry or the B.C. Electronic Librarian Network (BCELN).

To initiate this process as a member of Government, the EULA can be signed and access requested by the Expense Authority for your Branch/Division (e.g., Director or Executive Director), please open a ticket with the Data Systems & Services request system.

The following information is to be included in the request for BC Government employees:

Ministry
Division
Branch
List of names and IDIR's for each person that will be accessing and/or using the data
Short description of intended data use

To initiate this process as a member of the BCELN, please contact your school's Data Librarian.

Datasets available for download

Additional Info

Field	Value
Last Updated	October 19, 2025, 23:21 (UTC)
Created	October 19, 2025, 23:21 (UTC)
Domain / Topic Domain or topic of the dataset being cataloged.
Title Title for the Dataset.	BC Assessment - Data Advice
Description A description of the dataset.	In 1974, the Government of British Columbia created BC Assessment (BCA) as a Crown Corporation, funded primarily through a property tax levy, with the legislated mandate to provide “assessments that are uniform in the whole of the province” in accordance with the Assessment Act. Since its inception, BCA has provided uniform, fair and independent property assessments to the people of British Columbia. Data Advice is a data product providing customers with property assessment information. It was originally created in 1976 to provide taxing authorities the data they required to perform their taxation duties. Today the product is still used by taxing authorities, First Nations governments, Provincial Governments and enterprise customers to perform various business functions. The Data Advice data is available as both an annual full-roll XML file plus weekly XML updates, and as full-roll theme-based CSV files (complete (full roll) files, produced weekly). The themes currently available are: general description of individual properties street addresses of individual properties legal descriptions of individual properties sales history of individual properties land characteristics of individual properties general assessed value for property and improvements (for resources labelled "updates to yyyy roll") A data dictionary for the theme files is provided in this resource. Who can have Access: Use of these data is restricted to internal BC Government named users and some B.C. Post Secondary institutions. If you fall outside these parameters, please address your concerns directly with B.C. Assessment. How to get Access: All users of these data are required to enter into an End User License Agreement (EULA) under the authority of their Ministry or the B.C. Electronic Librarian Network (BCELN). To initiate this process as a member of Government, the EULA can be signed and access requested by the Expense Authority for your Branch/Division (e.g., Director or Executive Director), please open a ticket with the Data Systems & Services request system. The following information is to be included in the request for BC Government employees: Ministry Division Branch List of names and IDIR's for each person that will be accessing and/or using the data Short description of intended data use To initiate this process as a member of the BCELN, please contact your school's Data Librarian.
Tags / Keywords Keywords/tags categorizing the dataset.	BCA BCAA Data Advice
Format (CSV, XLS, TXT, PDF, etc) File format of the dataset.
Dataset Size Dataset size in megabytes.
Metadata Identifier Metadata identifier – can be used as the unique identifier for catalogue entry
Published Date Published date of the dataset.	2020-12-31
Time Period Data Span (start date) Start date of the data in the dataset.
Time Period Data Span (end date) End date of time data in the dataset.
GeoSpatial Area Data Span A spatial region or named place the dataset covers.

Field	Value
Access category Type of access granted for the dataset (open, closed, service, etc).
License License used to access the dataset.	Access Only
Limits on use Limits on use of data.
Location Location of the dataset.	https://catalogue.data.gov.bc.ca/dataset/bc-assessment-data-advice
Data Service Data service for accessing a dataset.
Owner Owner of the dataset.	BC Assessment Authority
Contact Point Who to contact regarding access?	DataBC
Contact Point Email The email to contact regarding access?	[email protected]
Publisher Publisher of the dataset.
Publisher Email Email of the publisher.
Author Author of the dataset.
Author Email Email of the author.
Accessed At Date the data and metadata was accessed.

Field	Value
Identifier Unique identifier for the dataset.
Language Language(s) of the dataset
Link to dataset description A URL to an external document describing the dataset.
Persistent Identifier Data is identified by a persistent identifier.
Globally Unique Identifier Data is identified by a persistent and globally unique identifier.
Contains data about individuals Does the data hold data about individuals?
Contains data about identifiable individuals Does the data hold identifiable data about individual?
Contains Indigenous Data Does the data hold data about Indigenous communities?
Portal Type Platform type of the source portal.

Field	Value
Version Version of the datatset	None
Source Source of the dataset.	https://info.bcassessment.ca/Services-products/Understanding-the-assessment-process/frequently-asked-questions-about-property-assessment
Version notes Version notes about the dataset.
Is version of another dataset Link to dataset that it is a version of.
Other versions Link to datasets that are versions of it.
Provenance Text Provenance Text of the data.	From BC Assessment, March 2022: BC Assessment - Technology Transformation Impacts on Data Advice As part of BC Assessment’s ongoing commitment to continuous improvement, we regularly conduct reviews of the products and services we offer, with a focus on providing an enhanced experience for our customers and business partners. With this focus in mind, BC Assessment is undergoing a technology transformation of our databases, reporting applications, and mass appraisal tools. As a result of the changes, there are administrative differences in data that will impact your Data Advice files (note that there will be no impact to the format or structure/schema of the XML file). The changes made will have minimal effect on the CSV files provided as resources and to the data loaded into the BC Geographic Warehouse. The only change affecting these is a standardization of how legal descriptions are expressed. For consumers of the XML files there will be some changes to the values in some of the fields. These changes are described in the files downloadable from this resource: https://catalogue.data.gov.bc.ca/dataset/bc-assessment-data-advice/resource/72090992-786c-4fb4-91f2-6ad47199723c. Note that many of the changes referred to in the explanation materials (in the resource) pertain to ownership of properties, and that property information is not made available by the DataBC program, and so those changes will not affect the resources supplied with this dataset.
Provenance URL Provenance URL of the data.
Temporal resolution Describes how granular the date/time data in the dataset is.
GeoSpatial resolution in meters Describes how granular (in meters) geospatial data is in the dataset.
GeoSpatial resolution (in regions) Describes how granular (in regions) geospatial data is in the dataset.

Field	Value
Indigenous Community Permission Who holds the Indigenous Community Permission. Who to contact regarding access to a dataset that has data about Indigenous communities.
Community Permission Community permission (who gave permission).
The Indigenous communities the dataset is about Indigenous communities from which data is derived.

Field	Value
Number of data rows If tabular dataset, total number of rows.
Number of data columns If tabular dataset, total number of unique columns.
Number of data cells If tabular dataset, total number of cells with data.
Number of data relations If RDF dataset, total number of triples.
Number of entities If RDF dataset, total number of entities.
Number of data properties If RDF dataset, total number of unique properties used by the triples.
Data quality Describes the quality of the data in the dataset.
Metric for data quality A metric used to measure the quality of the data, such as missing values or invalid formats.

BC Assessment - Data Advice

Datasets available for download

Additional Info

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