CBRM AND HALIFAX AVERAGE ASSESSMENT VALUES RE-VISITED

I’d like to make some comments in response to Charles Sampson’s critique (‘CBRM residential tax rate unfair,’ Cape Breton Post letter to the editor, April 12) of my March 21 letter to the Opinion page.

The substance of my letter was to refute Jamie MacDonald’s claim in his earlier letter to the Opinion page emphatically complaining the Cape Breton Regional Municipality taxpayer is paying twice as much as the Halifax taxpayer for the same municipal services because our tax rates are twice the rates in Halifax.

In my letter I compared average assessment values in CBRM with Halifax to explain that CBRM’s central urban tax rates are twice the rate in central urban Halifax because the average assessment for a single-family home in CBRM ($113,000) is 38 per cent of the average in Halifax ($296,000).

Charles countered by spouting unnamed “reputable realtors” saying “the average price of a single-family home in CBRM is $243,000 … and not the $113,000 Gillis claims.”

I didn’t claim anything. I referenced statistical facts. I also identified my source (i.e. Statistics Canada) and that agency gets its data from the agency delegated by the province to assess all properties in Nova Scotia (i.e. Property Value Services Corporation).

A reputable realtor would not have said what Charles claimed they said. They would have said “… of the very small percentage of all assessed homes in the CBRM which have been currently on the real estate market the average sold price is …”

But I will finish the comparison Charles should have done (i.e. compare the current real estate price for a home sold on the real estate market in CBRM with that in Halifax) and I will identify my source.

The real estate division of the Royal Bank of Canada states that the current average price of a single-family home sold in Halifax is $650,000. Now assuming Charles’ reputable source is accurate then we are right back to that statistic I used in my March 21 letter (i.e. the average home in CBRM is worth approximately 38 per cent of the value of the average home in Halifax).

So, a CBRM tax rate based on $100 of assessment value that is twice the rate in Halifax is justified considering both municipalities are obliged to provide the same services.

Malcolm Gillis Sydney