Assessments: Good, bad news for homeowners
Assessments on condos rising more rapidly than detached homes in city of Vancouver
The slowdown in Metro Vancouver real estate sales took a strip out of detachedhome values in the city of Vancouver — particularly at the highest end — while values in the city’s suburbs and other parts of the province continued rising, according to the British Columbia Assessment Authority.
The assessment authority, this week, started mailing 2019 property assessments to owners, based on market values as of July 1, 2018, which show declining values in Metro Vancouver for the first time in about a decade.
Assessments offer a bit of a “backward look” at changes in markets, said demographer Andy Yan, director of the City Program at Simon Fraser University, but do offer a baseline for acknowledging that changes are happening.
“We’ll only know moving forward, is this a break in the weather, or is this climate change?” Yan said.
“Are we seeing the slight kind of flattening (in markets) versus a fundamental change that has encapsulated British Columbia and the Lower Mainland for the last 10, 20 years?”
Generally, assessments show that across the city of Vancouver, detached homes dropped an average of four per cent in value, while condo values rose six per cent.
In North Vancouver, detached home values fell on average four per cent, while assessments on condos rose seven per cent.
Yan was reluctant to offer a forward-looking forecast. He would only say that even with new taxes, stricter mortgage qualifications and declining inflows of foreign capital into property markets, “it’s not affordability in our time” when it comes to prices.
“We haven’t seen that yet,” Yan said.
Broadly speaking, the range of value change for a single detached home on its assessment in the urban areas of Greater Vancouver will be from negative 15 per cent to plus 10 per cent. In the Fraser Valley, the average range is negative 10 per cent to plus 15 per cent.
The divergence between Metro Vancouver detachedhome prices declining, or rising in smaller increments than more rapidly increasing assessments on condominiums will likely be enough to shift some of the region’s tax base away from houses and on to strata-titled properties, said University of B.C. economist Tsur Somerville.
“For sure, taxes are going to go up, on a percentage basis, faster for condos than single-family (homes),” said Somerville, a senior fellow in UBC’s Centre for Urban Economics and Real Estate.
Elsewhere in the province, B.C. Assessment figures show an average jump of 23 per cent for condo owners in Whistler (to $962,000), and a 19 per cent jump for condo owners in Squamish (to $583,500).
In West Vancouver, detached property owners can expect a 12 per cent average drop in value to $2.8 million.
In the Fraser Valley region — that includes Surrey and Richmond — the biggest winners among detached residential property owners are deep in the valley, with Chilliwack values growing 10 per cent (to $613,000), District of Hope rising 17 per cent (to $416,000) and District of Mission 10 per cent (to $698,000).
In Abbotsford, condo owners will see their assessed values jump on average 28 per cent (to $353,000), while detached homeowners will see an average nine per cent rise (to $758,000).
City of Langley condo owners will see a 27 per cent average jump in valuation (to $396,000).
Surrey homeowners will receive an average four per cent rise for detached homes (to $1.042 million) and 14 per cent for condos (to $522,000). Single family homeowners in White Rock and Richmond will see an average two per cent drop.