When Was My House Built?
Three records can answer this: the assessment roll, the building permit record, and municipal archives. Which one you can reach, and whether it costs anything, depends on the province and the city. Start with the free route for where you live.
Try the Assessment Roll First
The assessment roll is the authoritative record of a property's year of construction. When it has a year, that year wins over every other source.
In Alberta, several cities publish assessment data as open data, so the year of construction is public and free to look up. Edmonton and Calgary both publish it.
In Ontario, assessment data is held by MPAC and is not published as open data. MPAC sells a Residential Year Built Report for $7.00 through propertyline. If the year is all you need, that is the cheapest and most authoritative way to get it, and it is a better buy than any compiled report including ours.
The Title Deed Does Not Show It
A common false start. A land title records ownership, the legal description, and registered encumbrances. It does not record when the building on the land was constructed. A title search will tell you when the land last changed hands, which for an older property is usually nothing like the construction date.
When the Roll Has No Year: the Permit Trail
Plenty of properties have no year on the roll, or sit in a city whose assessment data is not public. The building permit record can still bound the answer, and how far it bounds it depends on what the permits show. This is the ladder we run, in order.
An original-build permit dates the property
The earliest permit recording an original construction is the year, provided nothing older shows a building already standing.
No build permit gives a ceiling
A permit that could only have been issued on a building that already existed, a basement development or a re-roof, proves the house was standing by then, even though it does not say when it went up.
The city's permit window is itself a bound
A property with no permits at all across a city's published record predates that record.
A demolition resets the clock
Permits at or before the latest demolition describe a building that is no longer there. The house standing today is dated from what came after.
Otherwise, no year
Where the records support nothing, the honest answer is that the year is not established, not a guess dressed up as a fact.
How to Read a "Before 2016" Answer
When the record supports a ceiling rather than a date, the answer is written as a bound, and the bound is exclusive. A 2015 permit on a standing building proves the house existed in or before 2015, so the answer is "before 2016". It is not "built in 2015": a house finished in 2015 can have its basement developed later that same year.
An estimate like this is a real, defensible ceiling, and it is worth having when you are checking whether a property predates a construction era you care about. It is not a construction date, and anything downstream that needs a true year, an insurance question or a radon-era assessment, should treat it as the estimate it is.
Why the Year Matters
Construction era is a proxy for the materials and methods used, which is why insurers and inspectors ask for it. It points at the questions worth asking rather than answering them: the wiring and plumbing generation, whether the property sits in a combined sewer area, and what the building code required at the time.
None of that is a verdict on a house. An older property with a documented permit trail can be a far safer purchase than a newer one with unpermitted work.
What a Property Proof Report Gives You
We run the ladder above for any address in our markets and label which rung the answer came from, so a year from the assessment roll is never presented as equivalent to one inferred from a permit. Where nothing supports a year, the report says so.
Where a market publishes no assessment year, Ontario included, the ladder often stops at a ceiling rather than a date. Toronto's published permit record begins in 2000, so a house built before then usually resolves to a "before YYYY" bound or to no year at all. If a confirmed construction date is what you are after in Ontario, MPAC's $7.00 report is the answer, not this one.
If the year is the only thing you need, use the free or $7 route above. The report is worth it when you also want the permit timeline itself, the zoning, flood mapping, and infrastructure context for the address, which is the case when you are deciding whether to make an offer. It costs $49 CAD and takes about five minutes.
Common Questions
Can I find out when my house was built for free?
In several Alberta cities, yes: assessment data including the year of construction is published as open data. In Ontario the year is held by MPAC and sold as a $7.00 Residential Year Built Report rather than published. Elsewhere it depends on what the local assessment authority makes public.
Does a title search show the year a house was built?
No. A land title records ownership, the legal description, and registered encumbrances, not the construction date of the building.
How can I find the age of a house with no assessment record?
Through the building permit record. An original-build permit dates the property outright, and where there is none, a permit that could only have been issued on a standing building sets a ceiling on the year.
What does "before 2016" mean on a property report?
That the records prove the building was standing by the end of 2015 but do not establish when it was built. It is a conservative ceiling, not a construction date, and it should be read as an estimate.