Commercial property intelligence vs government assessment authority. Complementary data, different mandates.
BrightCat Data operates a weekly property intelligence pipeline covering 5.8M+ Canadian residential and 297K+ commercial properties across all ten provinces. The platform tracks listing activity, price changes, sold transactions, rental listings, and pre-mover signals at the property level.
MPAC (Municipal Property Assessment Corporation) is a not-for-profit organisation mandated by the Ontario government to assess the value of every property in Ontario for property tax purposes. MPAC maintains property records for approximately 5.5 million Ontario properties and produces Current Value Assessments (CVAs) used by municipalities to calculate property taxes.
BrightCat: National. All ten Canadian provinces. Residential, commercial, and rental. Weekly updates. Covers listing lifecycle events and market activity.
MPAC: Ontario only. All property types. Assessment cycle updates (typically every four years, with annual adjustments). Covers property characteristics and assessed value for taxation.
BrightCat data tells you what the market is doing right now. This week’s new listings, this week’s price changes, this week’s sold transactions. The signal is current and changes every seven days.
MPAC data tells you what a property is assessed at for tax purposes. The Current Value Assessment is a modelled estimate of market value as of a specific valuation date, not the current market price. Assessment values can diverge significantly from actual transaction prices, particularly in volatile markets.
MPAC property characteristic data — lot size, building area, year built, construction type — is useful as a static attribute layer. BrightCat market activity data — listing history, price trajectory, days on market, sold price — is useful as a dynamic signal layer.
Enterprise users frequently combine both: MPAC attributes for property classification and BrightCat signals for market timing. An insurer might use MPAC for building characteristics and BrightCat for listing-based risk flags. A lender might use MPAC for property type verification and BrightCat for current market value signals.
BrightCat: Commercial licensing. Snowflake Marketplace, Secure Data Share, MCP connector, flat files. Available to any enterprise buyer nationally.
MPAC: Data access is governed by Ontario legislation. Available to municipalities, property owners (for their own property), and authorised users under specific agreements. Bulk data access requires a formal relationship with MPAC.
BrightCat is a commercial property intelligence service covering all of Canada with weekly market signals. MPAC is a government-mandated assessment authority covering Ontario with property valuations for taxation. They serve different purposes and are complementary rather than competitive.
See the signals for yourself — real data, updated weekly.