Tag Archives: property tax

BC, Budget, economy, opinion, politics

City proposes 3.4% property tax increase

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89 Comments

You can probably handle paying an extra $49 bucks, but George Affleck points out that over the past 10 years the city budget has grown 30% while population has grown 9%.

The $1.32-billion draft 2017 budget was released late Wednesday afternoon. It includes a 3.4 per cent property tax increase and other increases for utility, recreation and permit fees.

The city says the increases will go towards greater costs for existing services that are in line with inflation and new expenditures in other areas like social housing, security and the arts.

According to the city, the property and utility fee increases will amount to an extra $49 in costs for a median homeowner in Vancouver.

Read the full article over at the CBC.

BC, economy, hype, opinion, politics, prices

Pity the detached home-owner

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There’s a lot of angry young people in Vancouver, people who think they deserve to be able to afford a home in this specific city.  A few of the angrier ones would like to make the issue all about race, but I guess if you’re of a certain kind of mindset EVERYTHING can be about race.

It wasn’t always like this.  Vancouver used to be a nice small town where the average income would be able to to stretch and afford a local detached home.  Wouldn’t it be great to have gotten in at that time?

Maybe not.  After all, It’s not these owners fault that property prices have gone up and up and property taxes have nudged up a bit as well.

Fortunately if you’re in this group the mayor of North Vancouver has got your back.

Mr. Mussatto said this week that he would like the province to look into separating single-family houses from condominiums and multiple-unit dwellings so owners of single-family houses could be charged a lower tax rate.

The mayor argues that while the value of single-family houses has skyrocketed in recent years, the value of condos has remained relatively stable. “If you’re a condo owner, your taxes may indeed be going down this year, because condos didn’t go up much or they didn’t go up at all compared to single-family homes,” he told me in an interview. “The bottom line is that there are some people who are getting hurt pretty significantly and I want to make sure that we’re fair with the tax system so everybody pays their fair share.”

Read the full article over at the Globe and Mail, and then if you’re so inclined go back to your racist rantings. That’s sure to be an effective way to change the way things are and get everybody on your side.

BC, data, equity, Open Topic, pictures, prices

Map of assessment changes from 2013 to 2014

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VMD pointed out this interesting zoomable map of assessed property value changes over the last year in Vancouver.

Anthony Smith at HealthyCityMaps created this map using BC assessment data.

At his site you can click and zoom in to see whats happened to values in different neighbourhoods.

Interesting to see how tax assessments vary from micro area to micro area.

Dark purple represents a large increase, yellow is neutral and dark orange is a large decrease from 2013 to 2014.

Screen Shot 2014-01-30 at 10.42.02 AM

View the full map here.

BC, opinion

More racism debate in the Courier

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The courier is getting lots of linkage from us as of late, but they’re playing both sides of this issue pretty well.  Is it racist to say that we should have foreign buyer restrictions or that absentee owners can kill a neighborhood?  Mark Hasiuk says NO.

Christy “Families First” Clark, a committed globalist, won’t restrict foreign ownership in B.C. Mayor Gregor Robertson, who slobbered over Beijing during a 2010 “trade mission” to China, won’t reform the tax code to accommodate the new normal. Which means foreign real estate investors pay the same rate (4.2 per cent) as local homeowners, not the business rate (18 per cent) they should.

Read the full article here.