It’s pretty much an inescapable issue if you live in Metro Vancouver and want to buy a place for yourself.
The cost of owning a property continues to soar, and this week there was more proof of that with the latest numbers from the real estate industry.
According to the Greater Vancouver Real Estate Board, the benchmark price for detached properties in the region jumped by 27.9 per cent to $1,293,700 from January 2015 to January 2016.
The numbers were even more dramatic in Burnaby with the average single-family home in Burnaby East selling for $1.058 million in January 2016, which was a 36 per cent increase from the previous year.
In Burnaby North, the benchmark price for a home hit $1.3 million, which was a 30 per cent increase from January 2015, while in Burnaby South you’ll need $1.345 million.
Daryl Wang owns a home in the Heights and was one of the homeowners on the high end of the scale affected by the ever-increasing market. His home’s assessment increased by 38 per cent in 2016, and he was one of a small group that rallied outside the B.C. Assessment office in Burnaby last week.
Wang’s biggest concern is the bill he’s going to get come property tax time, suggesting he could be looking at about a 20 per cent increase depending on where the mill rate is set. The city is looking at about a 2.5 per cent tax increase for 2016, but that will be for homes at the assessment average increase in Burnaby.
The average increase for a typical single-family home in Burnaby is between 15 and 25 per cent.
Wang noted as a retiree on a pension, the potential tax increase will have an impact on his own bottom line.
“No, I’m not going to give up my house, but I’m going to give up things in my retirement I kind of enjoy doing because we have to budget,” he told the NOW.
Wang supports the city’s call to freeze this year’s assessments to 2015 levels, suggesting it would give people time to come up with a plan to handle the increases in the future.
The issue also came up at city council this week. Coun. Paul McDonell attended the rally at the assessment office. He said he’s worried about seniors on a fixed income who will lose their homeowner grants, suggesting they may have to sell their homes.
“They get to the point where they just can’t hold on anymore,” he said.
McDonell also sees it being unfair a home that sells on a block for hundreds of thousands of dollars more than the market causes everyone else’s property to rise even though they have no intention of selling.
He continued to call on the province to freeze assessments to 2015 levels.
According to the real estate board numbers, the average price of a single family home in both Burnaby North and South has gone up by 125 per cent in 10 years, while in Burnaby East the increase is 107 per cent.
