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Do you know how much your property is really worth? And do you have a good idea of the rates you should be paying on it?

Municipal rates are one of the most important of all local government taxes and essential to the efficient functioning of your city or town not to mention maintenance of the quality of your environment.

Every one of us who owns a property is required to pay rates and rightly so. But because not all properties are created equal each has to be rated separately in order to determine a realistic, market-related value and therefore an equitable rates amount to be levied on the owner. The City of Cape Town is currently undertaking just such an exercise on the 780 000 rateable properties within its boundaries, pegged at a value as of 1 July 2009. But according to recent media reports, there are already problems with the preliminary values it has attached to many properties.

This is hardly surprising given the sheer scale of the project; inevitably there will be inaccuracies and misperceptions about individual properties? value. Indeed, the City may be in possession of outdated information relating to a property and it has also lamented the fact that it cannot obtain daytime access to many homes because of the unavailability of owners.

But the current valuation process is also problematic because property values have, in the past 18 months, depreciated significantly. According to the Absa house price index, the prices of small homes declined in real terms by 6.6 percent year-on-year in December, medium homes by 6.9 percent and large homes by 3.7 percent.

Granted, property values have increased nominally in the past few months, but not so much as to be significant at all. Therefore, rates valuation amounts should be substantially lower than they were in 2008 ? which means that many people could ultimately end up paying lower rates than they are at present, once the new rates are imposed.

The City of Cape Town, in an effort at transparency, has made its preliminary assessments of individual property values available on its website for home-owners to inspect. It has also posted the assessments and an indicative "cents in the rand" rates amount to home-owners to help them prepare for the rates they will have to begin paying in the second half of this year.

Capetonians have two months, as of 22 February, in which to challenge the municipal valuation of their property. After this period, says the City, objections will not be entertained. It is also making the objections process easy, with 18 rates evaluation inspection centres during the objection period, as well as a call centre.

Article continues on page two; information on how to object on page three...