B.C. Assessment mailed out a record number of early warnings this week to property owners whose assessments have risen so much beyond the average, they want homeowners to have advance notice.
We don’t know if the advance notice is going to soften the blow in Burnaby. As our front-page story details, increases in Burnaby are dramatic.
In all, there are 7,180 Burnaby properties with assessment increases at, or greater than, 20 per cent. The report given to city council noted of these properties, 7,012 have increases in excess of 40 per cent. The vast majority – 6,720 – are single-family homes, facing an average increase of 32 per cent.
In at least one case, a homeowner will see their property assessment increase by 68 per cent.
One of the problems, as Burnaby city council noted, is that homes that were once eligible for the homeowner grant are now being kicked up a notch and are no longer eligible. The maximum threshold for the homeowner grant is $1.26 million and has been set since 2006.
Given the dramatic increases in real estate prices in our area, it doesn’t take a mansion to be valued at $1.26 million anymore. In fact, once-average homes are now in that range.
That said, let’s take a step back and look at this realistically: Why should people sitting on $1.3-million properties get help from the government?
Millennials and others watching the property market grow farther and farther out of their reach likely won’t be thrilled that their tax dollars are subsidizing those who have lucked into windfalls in the form of ridiculously valuable property. And, with homelessness being an ever-growing problem in Burnaby and the region at large, it seems even more ludicrous to expect the government to help homeowners facing the “first-world problem” of highly valuable property.
Yes, help needs to be available for those who genuinely need it. The province already offers extra assistance for seniors, those with disabilities and veterans, among others, and we’d like to see a policy that allows some form of assistance to continue for those in genuine need.
Somehow, all levels of government need to work out ways of handling a real estate market gone bonkers.
But simply handing out taxpayer dollars to people who are already millionaires (at least on paper) doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
